The Ebola death toll in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reached 1,309 as of July 25, 2026. That is a jump of more than 40 percent in just five days, according to DRC government figures cited by Al Jazeera. Total confirmed cases, including deaths, hit 2,973 as of Thursday, up 27 percent from the previous Saturday. The DRC Ministry of Health first declared the outbreak on May 14, 2026, after testing blood samples in three health zones in Ituri province and finding 8 positive cases.

Ituri, in the country's northeast, is the centre of the outbreak. The speed of this epidemic is unmatched. The 2013–2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak killed more than 11,000 people, but it took roughly eight months to reach 1,000 deaths. This outbreak crossed that mark in under 10 weeks.

The virus behind it is called Bundibugyo ebolavirus. It is the rarest of the four Ebola species known to make humans sick. There is no approved vaccine or treatment for it. Abdulsalami Nasidi, a public health consultant who helped set up the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Al Jazeera the virus was "spreading like a wildfire" because no proven vaccine exists. In past outbreaks, health workers used a strategy called ring vaccination — vaccinating everyone in a circle of contact around each sick person — to stop the spread. That tool does not exist for this strain.

On July 24, 2026, the University of Oxford announced that the first volunteer had received a dose in the world's first Bundibugyo Ebola vaccine trial. Katrina Pollock leads the Oxford team running it. This early-stage study is the first to test a Bundibugyo-specific vaccine in humans, looking at whether it is safe and whether it triggers an immune response. But a vaccine ready for wide use is still months away at best.

The toll on health workers is heavy. More than 100 have been infected since the outbreak began, and around 35 have died as of July 25. At several hospitals in Ituri province, health workers went on strike over unpaid wages and unsafe conditions. In May, residents set fire to parts of an Ebola treatment centre at Rwampara General Hospital near Bunia. Community mistrust like this has long made it harder to fight outbreaks in the region.

The outbreak has spread beyond the DRC's borders. RFI reported on July 25 that Uganda announced its first death. Africa CDC's report from July 13 counted 2,031 confirmed cases and 756 deaths across DRC and Uganda combined. By July 17, those numbers had risen to 2,287 cases and 895 deaths. The DRC's own July 25 numbers, covering the DRC alone, now exceed those combined totals.

The World Health Organization and Africa CDC jointly declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency. Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya warned on X that if the outbreak is not stopped, it will become the worst the world has seen. On May 23, the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan set up a regional coordination framework in Kampala. The DRC Minister of Health visited a treatment centre in Ituri on June 19 to assess patient care. The DRC Ministry of Health keeps posting regular updates on its website, and WHO's Africa office maintains a dedicated outbreak page.

The broader context here is a virus with no available medicine meeting a health system under enormous pressure. The last major DRC Ebola outbreak, which ended in 2020, was stopped with a vaccine that was already approved and stockpiled. This one has no such tool. The Oxford trial is a necessary first step, but getting from a first dose in a volunteer to a vaccine cleared for emergency use takes many months, even on an accelerated timeline. Until then, the response depends entirely on the basics of public health: finding cases, tracing contacts, isolating the sick, and ensuring safe burials. That is happening in a place where health workers are on strike, treatment centres have been attacked, and community trust is fragile. If the current growth rate continues, this outbreak could overtake the West Africa epidemic at the same stage. Kaseya's warning that this could become the worst outbreak ever documented is not an overstatement when you look at how fast the numbers are rising and the fact that there is no vaccine.