Ebola Bundibugyo in Congo: 6,604 confirmed cases and 3,175 deaths

The figures on the Congolese Ebola epidemic updated as of September 5, 2026 are as follows: 6,604 confirmed cases and 3,175 deaths, with 82 new infections and 41 additional deaths recorded in a single day. At least 851 patients are reported hospitalized in isolation, 1,548 people have been declared recovered, and 61 health zones across six provinces are affected. The data comes from the World Health Organization and is reported by Afrik.com, by Vidal, which relies on a news agency dispatch from September 2nd and on the health agency’s recommendations, and by ONU Info.

The epidemic was declared on May 15, 2026 in the province of Ituri: it is the seventeenth Congolese Ebola epidemic and the deadliest ever recorded in the country. It is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which no approved vaccines or treatments exist.

Indicator	Value as of September 5, 2026
Confirmed cases	6,604
Deaths	3,175
New cases in one day	82
New deaths in one day	41
Hospitalized in isolation	at least 851
Declared recovered	1,548
Health zones affected	61 across six provinces

The bottleneck is isolation capacity

The treatment centers currently active number 59 and together offer a capacity of around 1,400 beds. To bring it to 3,000, the World Health Organization calculates that another 1,600 are needed. Alongside the beds is a second parameter, which explains why the problem cannot be solved simply by setting up facilities: the estimated need is for about three healthcare workers per bed. Doubling capacity thus means recruiting, training and protecting personnel in the same proportion.

The gap between the 1,400 existing beds and the 3,000 indicated as necessary measures the difference between the response currently underway and what the international body considers adequate. It is not a forecast of how infections will develop: it is a needs assessment published by a health institution.

Vaccines: what the recommendations say

On the vaccine front the WHO’s position is limited and must be reported precisely, because the circulating strain has no approved products. In the document released on September 1st, the organization indicates that the Ervebo vaccine, against the Bundibugyo strain, should be used only within clinical studies measuring its efficacy. It is a formulation that carries its own limitation: use is envisaged within a research protocol, not as an available and proven prophylaxis for this strain.

At the end of August, 16,250 doses of Ervebo arrived in the country: priority for administration was given to hospital workers and those involved in the field response, and the first vaccinations began in Kisangani. The WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reported that two new candidate vaccines against the Bundibugyo virus are being tested in the United Kingdom and in Canada to verify their safety: we summarize his statement without quotation marks because the original exceeds this publication’s citation limit. These are ongoing safety studies, not available products or vaccines with demonstrated efficacy.

What we don’t know

The dossier does not contain the breakdown of cases by province, the case fatality rate calculated by the agency, the number of healthcare workers infected, nor the amount of funding requested and obtained for the response. It does not contain the start date of clinical trials in Congo beyond the October or November indication reported by Vidal, nor the planned protocols.

The data published here is updated as of September 5, 2026 and is by its nature provisional: in an ongoing epidemic, case and death figures are updated upward, and downward revisions due to reclassifications are possible. When they occur, we will flag them as such.