Ebola updates — latest reports and timeline

Public Health Agency of Canada chief PHO Dr Joss Reimer issues a 19 May Tuesday-afternoon Ottawa statement on Canadian BDBV preparedness following the PHEIC declaration: enhanced entry screening is activated at Toronto Pearson, Montreal Trudeau, Vancouver International and Calgary International for travellers from DRC, Uganda and South Sudan; the National Microbiology Laboratory Winnipeg has stood up a 24/7 BDBV reference-PCR shift; and the Canadian Red Cross / IFRC corridor for safe-burial PPE airlifts to Goma is activated under the Pandemic Fund earmark. No suspect cases are reported in Canada; the PHAC reference-page is refreshed daily at 09:00 EDT.

STAT News publishes a 19 May Tuesday-evening 22:00 EDT (04:00 CEST Wednesday) deep-dive on the compassionate-use mAb114 administration to Dr Peter Stafford at the BNI Hamburg: although mAb114 is only licensed for Zaire ebolavirus, the in-vitro neutralisation data from the Vanderbilt and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics labs against the new Ituri BDBV consensus shows partial cross-neutralisation, which BARDA cited as sufficient rationale for the IND. The piece quotes Vanderbilt's James Crowe and CDC-VSPB's Christina Spiropoulou; it also surfaces a parallel inmazeb (REGN-EB3) and ZMapp evaluation that BARDA is fast-tracking through compassionate-use pathways.

Associated Press files a 19 May Tuesday-evening Bunia wire: the cordon-style perimeter at the Bunia Ebola Treatment Centre is now under joint MONUSCO / FARDC / WHO security with the Salama-clinic and Rwampara field-hospital sites under similar daylight-and-night coverage; AP reporters witness the staggered admission of 14 suspect cases off the Mongbwalu–Bunia corridor through the Tuesday afternoon and 6 deceased patients moved to the joint MSF / DRC Red Cross safe-burial site outside Bunia. AP and the BBC's Joint Africa Bureau confirm the suspected-case caseload has crossed 430 across nine Ituri health zones plus Kinshasa, Goma and Kampala.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issues a 19 May 22:00 CEST Tuesday-evening statement on the Bundibugyo response: cumulative line list rises to 16 lab-confirmed cases (13 DRC, 3 Uganda) and >110 deaths against 430+ suspected cases per the joint INRB / Uganda CPHL / NICD reference-laboratory close at 18:00 CAT. Tedros confirms the IHR Emergency Committee will reconvene on 9 June to review the PHEIC determination; thanks Africa CDC Director-General Dr Jean Kaseya for the 72-hour IMST update; and flags the BNI Hamburg compassionate-use mAb114 infusion as the first cross-species filovirus-mAb administration on the BDBV consensus.

The CDC and Department of Homeland Security issue a Title 42 order imposing a 21-day entry restriction on non-US passport holders who have been in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan in the prior 21 days. CDC simultaneously raises the DRC travel notice to Level 2 (Practice Enhanced Precautions) and Uganda to Level 1 (Practice Usual Precautions); airline manifests are screened against the watchlist by CBP at JFK, IAD, ATL, ORD and SFO funnel airports.

Dr Peter Stafford is medically evacuated by US State Department / Phoenix Air air-ambulance to the Bernhard-Nocht-Institut für Tropenmedizin in Hamburg — the closest high-containment facility with prior Ebola-care experience (2014 Sierra Leone repatriation). His wife and Dr Patrick LaRochelle accompany the flight for asymptomatic observation at the BNI's high-consequence-infectious-disease ward; BARDA and the CDC discuss compassionate-use mAb114 / inmazeb under the IND mechanism despite the Zaire-only label.

CDC Atlanta deploys an international response team to the DRC and Uganda under the Global Rapid Response Team mechanism: 22 epidemiologists, IPC specialists and laboratorians are mobilised, with the first wave landing at N'djili Kinshasa late on 18 May en route to Bunia. The Acting CDC Director's Monday telebriefing reaffirms a 'LOW immediate risk' assessment for the US general public; the EOC is activated at Level 2 with the Bundibugyo response folded into the broader filovirus preparedness portfolio.

Africa CDC Director-General tells BBC News on 18 May that at least 100 people have died in the Ituri outbreak and more than 390 suspected cases are now under investigation across nine health zones in Ituri Province plus Kinshasa and Goma. Field hospitals are being stood up in Bunia as existing wards are overwhelmed; BBC and AP teams report on the cordon-style perimeter at the Bunia Ebola Treatment Centre and the staggered admission of suspect cases off the Mongbwalu–Bunia corridor.

WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on the advice of the IHR Emergency Committee, determines that the Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the DRC and Uganda constitutes a Public Health Emergency of International Concern under IHR Article 12 (not a pandemic emergency). Temporary Recommendations cover head-of-state-led EOC activation, cross-border screening at airports and land crossings, 21-day contact monitoring, and accelerated clinical trials for candidate Bundibugyo therapeutics and vaccines.

A laboratory-confirmed Kinshasa BDBV case is announced by the DRC Ministry of Health in an individual returning from Ituri (an earlier 16 May suspect-case had tested negative on confirmatory INRB testing and is therefore not counted). The patient is hospitalised at the Cliniques Universitaires de Kinshasa under high-consequence-infectious-disease precautions; contact tracing is launched at the N'djili International Airport and along the Ituri–Kinshasa air corridor.

A separate BDBV-positive case is confirmed in Goma, the North Kivu provincial capital currently under M23 administrative control, in a woman who travelled from Ituri Province. The case underscores cross-province amplification risk along the Goma–Bunia road and the Lake Kivu basin; humanitarian access for contact tracing is hampered by the ongoing security situation and the lack of a unified provincial command in North Kivu.

Dr Peter Stafford — an American physician with the Pennsylvania-based Christian medical mission Serge, working at Nyankunde Hospital outside Bunia since 2023 — tests positive for Bundibugyo virus at the INRB-supported Bunia field laboratory under joint Africa CDC and WHO supervision. His wife Dr Rebekah Stafford and colleague Dr Patrick LaRochelle remain asymptomatic on day-0 PCR and enter 21-day high-risk contact monitoring; six exposed Americans in total are placed under enhanced surveillance.

ECDC Stockholm activates its Threat Tracking Tool for the Bundibugyo outbreak and publishes a rapid risk note: the likelihood of infection for EU/EEA residents is assessed as very low (low likelihood of importation, very low likelihood of secondary transmission); for EU/EEA travellers in or near Ituri Province the risk is low. ECDC coordinates with Africa CDC, WHO and the European Commission HSC; Member States are advised to refresh BDBV-suspect case definitions and laboratory referral pathways.

Africa CDC convenes an urgent regional coordination meeting at the African Union HQ with the DRC, Uganda, South Sudan, WHO, UNICEF, the African Medicines Agency, the US CDC and the Pandemic Fund. An Incident Management Support Team is activated with a 72-hour action plan: multidisciplinary surge teams deployed, a medical countermeasures workstream stood up under the AMA, sequencing and R&D coordination mandated, and political escalation routed through African Union leadership.

Uganda confirms a second laboratory-positive imported BDBV case in Kampala, identified within 24 hours of the index decedent — an individual returning from Ituri with no apparent epidemiological link to the first case. The Ministry of Health flags this as evidence of multiple independent introduction events and triggers the National Task Force on Public Health Emergencies; the patient is moved into isolation at the Entebbe Hospital high-consequence-infectious-disease ward.

Médecins Sans Frontières announces a large-scale operational response to the Ituri outbreak from its Salama clinic in Bunia, where three suspected BDBV cases have already been isolated. MSF deploys additional medical, logistical and water-sanitation teams experienced in viral haemorrhagic fever, along with PPE, body bags and rapid-deployment Ebola treatment-centre tents. The DRC Health Minister announces three new treatment centres to be commissioned in Bunia, Rwampara and Mongbwalu.

INRB Kinshasa confirms Bundibugyo virus in 8 of 13 samples (5 inconclusive, 0 negative) from the Rwampara and Mongbwalu panel by orthoebolavirus-specific RT-PCR and partial GP-gene Sanger sequencing. The DRC Ministry of Health, in a joint press statement with the Africa CDC, declares the 17th Ebola disease outbreak in the country and the first Bundibugyo emergence since the 2012 Isiro cluster. Cumulative tally to date: 8 confirmed and 246 suspected cases across three Ituri health zones (Bunia, Rwampara, Mongbwalu) with 80 suspected deaths including 4 among confirmed cases.

Uganda's Central Emergency Surveillance and Response Support Laboratory (Wandegeya) issues final confirmation of Bundibugyo virus in the 59-yo Kibuli Muslim Hospital decedent. The Ministry of Health declares the imported case in a public statement and announces enhanced entry screening at Entebbe International Airport and the Mpondwe / Bunagana / Goli land crossings; 65 contacts are listed, 15 classified high-risk under 21-day follow-up.

Uganda's first BDBV imported case dies at Kibuli Muslim Hospital on day three of admission. A clinical sample collected on admission is referred to the Central Public Health Laboratory at Wandegeya for orthoebolavirus PCR; provisional reading on the evening of 14 May is positive for Bundibugyo virus, prompting Uganda's Public Health Emergency Operations Centre to be activated overnight and 47 hospital contacts to be ring-fenced.

DRC Ministry of Health rapid-response team — joined by WHO AFRO, MSF, and Africa CDC field epidemiologists — conducts an in-depth investigation across the Rwampara and Mongbwalu health zones. 13 patient samples are collected, cold-chain packaged and shipped to the INRB (Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale) in Kinshasa for orthoebolavirus and arbovirus differential PCR; the team also begins active case-finding in six Rwampara health areas.

A 59-year-old Congolese man with recent travel from Ituri Province is admitted to Kibuli Muslim Hospital, Kampala, with severe febrile illness, vomiting and mucosal bleeding. Initial differential diagnoses (falciparum malaria, typhoid, viral hepatitis) are pursued in parallel; the clinical team flags the case to the Uganda Ministry of Health on 12 May after the patient deteriorates rapidly despite first-line antimalarial therapy.

WHO Geneva is formally alerted by the DRC International Health Regulations focal point to an unknown high-mortality illness in Mongbwalu Health Zone with four healthcare-worker deaths inside four days. WHO AFRO activates a multidisciplinary support team; the country office in Kinshasa coordinates with the INRB to dispatch a rapid response team and biosafe sample-collection kits to Bunia.

Four healthcare workers at Mongbwalu General Referral Hospital die within four days of each other after caring for severely febrile patients linked back to Case A's contact chain. The cluster prompts the Ituri Provincial Health Division to file the alert that triggers the 5 May WHO notification; IPC assessments later identify multiple breaches in personal protective equipment use and patient triage at the facility.

Case A dies on the third day of illness at a medical centre in Bunia (the Ituri provincial capital) after deterioration consistent with viral haemorrhagic fever. The death is recorded as 'fièvre hémorragique d'origine indéterminée' on the provincial line list; samples are not collected at this stage and the body is released for community burial, an event later identified as a likely amplification node for the Rwampara cluster.

Earliest currently known suspected case (Case A) — a healthcare worker at the Mongbwalu Health Zone reports symptom onset with high fever, vomiting, intense malaise and mucosal haemorrhaging on 24 April 2026. Per WHO DON602 the worker had been managing severe febrile patients at an informal clinic in Mongbwalu town in the preceding 10 days; no protective equipment beyond gloves was available. The case is referred onward to Bunia for higher-level care.