Africa's top public health agency announced on 6 August 2026 a major step-up in the fight against Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Confirmed cases have passed 4,000, and health officials are worried the virus may be changing in ways that make it more dangerous. Dr Jean Kaseya, who leads Africa CDC, said the time for small, gradual steps was over. Response teams would now go "door to door" looking for sick people (The Guardian).

The DRC's national health institute recorded 3,973 cases and 1,801 deaths as of 4 August. The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola. It was first reported on 15 May, though there are suspicions it may have been spreading since January. It is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record. Cases have been reported in Ituri province, where the outbreak is centred and which is a conflict-affected mining region, as well as in Nord-Kivu, Sud-Kivu, Haut-Uele, and Tshopo provinces. Neighbouring Uganda recorded 20 cases before bringing its outbreak under control (The Guardian).

The numbers are growing far faster than the 2014–18 West Africa Ebola outbreak, which ultimately infected more than 28,000 people and killed at least 11,000. Eleven weeks into this outbreak, the DRC had already recorded eight times more cases and six times more deaths than the West Africa outbreak had at the same point (The Guardian).

Kaseya said he and WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus planned studies to find out whether the virus is mutating. Ebola is a virus, and viruses can mutate, meaning their genetic code changes over time. Sometimes those changes make a virus spread more easily or become more deadly. The concern here is that the Bundibugyo strain has usually been less deadly than the Zaire strain that caused the 2014–18 epidemic, so the high number of deaths in this outbreak is unusual and worrying to scientists.

Several signs point to a response that is not keeping up with how fast the virus is spreading. More than two-thirds of Ebola deaths are happening in the community rather than in treatment centres. That means patients are not being found and isolated quickly enough to stop the virus from passing to others. At an MSF treatment centre in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, 90% of admitted patients do not appear on authorities' lists of people who were in contact with known Ebola cases (The Guardian). MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, is actively responding to the outbreak in both the DRC and Uganda (Doctors Without Borders).

Contact tracing is a key tool for stopping Ebola. It works like a detective following a trail: for every person confirmed to have Ebola, health workers find everyone who was near them and monitor those people for symptoms for 21 days. If done well, it breaks the chain of transmission. But it is badly lagging here. Kaseya said only 10 contacts are being identified for every Ebola patient when about 40 would be expected. Dr Wessam Mankoula, acting head of emergency preparedness and response at Africa CDC, said response teams planned a shift "from contact tracing to active case search." That means community health workers will go door to door asking households if anyone is sick with Ebola symptoms (The Guardian).

Kaseya promised a "village-centered response" that involves local communities, more use of digital tools, and greater action in camps for people who have been forced from their homes by conflict. The DRC is facing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, made worse by an outbreak for which no licensed vaccine exists (International Rescue Committee).

On treatment and prevention, officials said they planned to start using the antiviral drug remdesivir on a compassionate use basis. That means giving a drug that is not yet officially approved for Ebola to seriously ill patients because there are no better options. They also planned to test whether Ervebo, the vaccine approved for the Zaire strain of Ebola, should be offered in the affected provinces. Some data suggest that Bundibugyo caused less serious disease and "zero death" among people who had received the Ervebo vaccine, though it is not currently approved for this strain (The Guardian).

Dr Placide Mbala Kingebeni, Africa CDC director of research, clinical trials and innovation, said public health measures alone would not be enough to quickly control or stop the outbreak given how much it has spread (The Guardian).

Africa CDC and WHO launched a Continental Preparedness and Response Plan for Ebola to coordinate containment and preparedness across African Union Member States. The joint plan aims to raise $518 million to strengthen outbreak response through November 2026 (CIDRAP; Africa CDC). The US CDC states it is responding to the outbreak, which is spreading substantially in the DRC and Uganda (US CDC).

The broader context here is one of a health system facing a virus that is moving faster than the standard tools can handle. The West Africa outbreak was eventually contained through a massive international effort, contact tracing at large scale, and the rapid development of vaccines. In the DRC, conditions are much harder: active conflict, displacement, and damaged roads and infrastructure make it difficult to reach people in affected areas, and there is no licensed vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain. The decision to switch from contact tracing to door-to-door case search is an admission that the usual method of breaking transmission chains has not worked well enough here. Whether this new approach can fill the gap, in regions where armed groups operate and trust in authorities is fragile, will likely determine whether this outbreak grows to rival the 2014–18 catastrophe. The planned mutation studies add another layer of concern: if the virus is changing in ways that make it spread more easily or cause more severe illness, the response will need to change with it.