Ebola Is Back. This Time There’s No Vaccine.

ITURI PROVINCE, DRC — The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 17. As of Saturday, 968 suspected cases and at least 216 deaths had been reported — and epidemiologists say the real count is likely higher. The outbreak has already reached Kinshasa, Uganda’s capital Kampala, and South Kivu Province. A patient was hospitalized in the Netherlands last week. The U.S. evacuated an infected American doctor to Germany for treatment.
This one is different from past outbreaks in a way that matters. The 2026 outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus — not the Zaire strain that every existing approved Ebola vaccine and treatment was developed to combat. There are currently no licensed vaccines and no approved treatments for Bundibugyo virus disease. Health workers responding to this outbreak are working without the pharmaceutical safety net that contained previous emergencies.
The WHO said as much in its emergency declaration. The absence of specific countermeasures makes this event “extraordinary,” the organization noted, even against a baseline of extraordinary. Previous Ebola outbreaks in DRC have been brutal and logistically impossible — but they had tools. This one does not.
The outbreak started in Ituri Province, in northeastern DRC, a region already destabilized by militia activity, weak health infrastructure, and displacement. The DRC has now recorded 17 separate Ebola outbreaks since the virus was first identified in 1976, with the previous one ending just five months ago in December 2025. The back-to-back timing has stretched health worker capacity, community trust in treatment centers, and international donor attention simultaneously.
Angry residents attacked and burned a tent at a health treatment site in the outbreak zone last week. That is not new to DRC Ebola response — the same dynamic complicated multiple previous outbreaks — but it makes contact tracing and containment measurably harder.
The CDC issued a Level 3 Travel Notice for DRC and a Level 1 for Uganda on May 15. On May 18, DHS and CDC announced enhanced airport screening for travelers returning from high-risk countries. No confirmed cases have been reported in the United States.
Africa CDC declared a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security on May 18, the day after the WHO designation. Over 1,000 contacts are currently being tracked in Ituri Province alone. The outbreak is also being monitored in North Kivu and has now touched Kinshasa — a city of 17 million people with international air connections — which changes the exposure calculus for every country with flights to Central Africa.
Spain is reviewing safety measures ahead of a scheduled soccer match between Chile and the DRC national team on June 9. Belgium placed the DRC national football squad in isolation after they arrived in the country. The virus is no longer confined to a remote province.
A UK vaccine is reportedly in development for the Bundibugyo strain. Development timelines for infectious disease vaccines are measured in months at best, years more realistically.
The outbreak is 216 deaths old and accelerating. The tools to stop it do not yet exist.