Ebola BVD

Summary

This section is a summary of the current situation with key developments since the last update.

Since early May, an outbreak of Ebola Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD) has been spreading in the DRC and neighboring Uganda, and has now spread to France. Global.health is tracking confirmed cases using a mix of official and unofficial sources to build an epidemiological line list, presenting the data in this report via cumulative epi curves, weekly case incidence, and health zone-level breakdowns to help monitor the outbreak's trajectory in near real-time.

Currently, there are 1549 confirmed cases, including 494 confirmed deaths, in 3 countries.

Table 1. Outbreak Summary. Number of new and total confirmed cases and deaths by country. Data reported through July 4th 2026.

Democratic Republic of the Congo
Confirmed Cases New: 254 Total: 1528	Confirmed Deaths New: 132 Total: 492
Uganda
Confirmed Cases New: 0 Total: 20	Confirmed Deaths New: 0 Total: 2
France
Confirmed Cases New: 0 Total: 1	Confirmed Deaths New: 0 Total: 0

Epidemiological Update

This section includes an epidemiological update with an epi curve, weekly case incidence, age and gender distribution, data availability chart, symptoms figure, and genomic data.

Case Definitions:

WHO surveillance case definitions:

• Suspected case - any person, alive or dead, suffering or having suffered from sudden onset of high fever, and had contact with: a suspected, probable, or confirmed Ebola case, or a dead or sick animal; OR any person with sudden onset of high fever, AND at least three of the following symptoms: headache, lethargy, anorexia/loss of appetite, aching muscles or joints, stomach pain, difficulty swallowing, vomiting, difficulty breathing, diarrhoea, hiccups; OR any person with inexplicable bleeding; OR any sudden, inexplicable death.
• Probable case - any suspected case evaluated by a clinician, OR any deceased suspected case (where it has not been possible to collect specimens for laboratory confirmation) having an epidemiological link with a confirmed case.
• Confirmed case - any suspected or probable case with a positive laboratory result (detection of Ebola virus by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), or detection of Immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies directed against Ebola viruses).
• Discarded case - any suspected or probable case with a negative laboratory result (showing no specific antibodies, ribonucleic acid (RNA) or specific detectable antigens).

Source: WHO Ebola Virus Outbreak Toolkit

Context & Background

Ebola disease is caused by a group of viruses, known as orthoebolaviruses (formerly ebolavirus), that can cause serious illness and death.

Ebola disease first occurred in 1976 in two simultaneous, but distinct, outbreaks in what are now South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, affecting a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name. Since then, it has caused repeated outbreaks across Central and West Africa with an average Ebola disease case fatality rate around 50%. Most people are familiar with the strain behind the devastating 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak — the largest ever recorded — but Ebola actually refers to six distinct viral species, and crucially, not all of them have the same tools available to fight them. That distinction is at the heart of why the current outbreak is so alarming.

The strain now circulating in this 2026 outbreak is Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD), first identified in Uganda in 2007 and seen again in the DRC in 2012. Like other Ebola strains, it spreads through contact with infected bodily fluids, unsafe burial practices, and inadequate infection control in healthcare settings, with fruit bats suspected as the original source of transmission to humans.

One of the biggest challenges with BVD is that it's hard to identify early on. Initial symptoms — fever, fatigue, headache — look a lot like malaria or other common illnesses, making it easy to miss until the disease has already spread. From there, it can progress rapidly to severe gastrointestinal illness, organ failure, and internal bleeding.

Unlike some other Ebola strains, there is no approved vaccine or treatment for BVD. Historical outbreaks have killed between 30% and 50% of those infected. The response therefore depends on getting the basics right: finding cases quickly, isolating patients, tracing contacts, implementing infection prevention and control measures, ensuring safe burials, and engaging affected communities (RCCE). In a stable environment, that's a tall order. In a conflict-affected region with large displaced populations and stretched healthcare infrastructure, it becomes exponentially harder.

2026 Outbreak

DRC: In early May 2026, the WHO was notified of a deadly, unidentified illness in the Ituri Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including the deaths of several healthcare workers. After rapid response teams investigated, the illness was confirmed as Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD), a strain of Ebola, prompting the DRC government to officially declare its 17th Ebola outbreak on May 15th.

The outbreak is believed to have originated in Mongbwalu, a busy mining area, before spreading to nearby health zones as infected individuals traveled seeking medical care. Containment has been made significantly more difficult by the region's challenging conditions — including ongoing instability, large refugee populations, and constant cross-border movement driven by trade and mining activity. Contact tracing is further hampered by difficult terrain and highly mobile populations, raising the risk that high-risk contacts go unidentified or are lost to follow-up.

Ituri's role as a regional migration and commerce hub, bordering both Uganda and South Sudan, heightens the risk of regional spread, particularly if border screening and cross-border coordination are not rapidly strengthened. Those concerns proved well-founded when Uganda confirmed an imported BVD case on May 15th involving a Congolese man who died in Kampala, signaling the outbreak had already crossed international borders. With transmission extending beyond DRC and the situation showing no signs of slowing, the WHO Director-General declared the event a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on May 17th.

Uganda: Uganda confirmed its first imported case of BVD on May 15th, involving a Congolese man who had traveled to Kampala and later died. Since then, the outbreak has grown to 20 confirmed cases and one probable case, with four total deaths recorded so far. Of the confirmed cases, 15 are travel-related imports and five reflect secondary transmission among contacts and health workers linked to those imported cases. There is currently no documented community transmission in Uganda.

France: France reported its first confirmed case of BVD on June 24th, involving a healthcare worker who had returned from a humanitarian mission in an affected area of the DRC. The case was travel-related, with the patient in stable condition after being immediately admitted to a specialized facility upon return, with isolation and secure hospital transfer implemented to prevent onward transmission. There is no secondary transmission linked to this case, and it remains the only confirmed BVD case reported in France to date.

This remains an evolving public health event.

Data & Analytical Notes

1. Suspected cases. Global.health's line list includes DRC suspected case data through INSP Situation Report 13 (data as of May 27, 2026; n=906), the last report to provide health zone-level detail. Subsequent reports have aggregated suspected cases and deaths at the province or country level only, and publicly available sources do not allow Global.health to reconcile or discard earlier suspected cases against these later figures. As a result, suspected case counts in the line list should be treated as a partial, time-limited snapshot rather than a current total. Global.health separately curates aggregate suspected case data over time; this is available upon request.
2. Recoveries. Recovery outcomes are not consistently available at the health zone level in official DRC sources, including INSP Situation Reports, and are therefore not systematically reflected in the individual cases in the Global.health line list. Global.health separately curates aggregate recovery data over time; this is available upon request.
3. Data Availability. The Global.health line list is built from a mix of official and unofficial public sources. Reporting granularity varies and often lacks case-level detail, which limits the completeness and consistency of dataset parameters.

Curator Notes

1. Date_death. Outcome is an optional field indicating the disease outcome for each case. When "Death" is selected as the Outcome, a corresponding Date_death must be entered in the line list; where more specific information isn't available, curators default to the Date of Report. In many instances, Date_confirmation and Date_death will match, consistent with established curation procedures designed to maintain consistency across records. In situations where a death is reported without an associated case, curators assign the death to the most recent case on record for that health zone that does not yet have an outcome assigned. This approach introduces some assumptions and bias but preserves a usable record of deaths by report date.

References

1. World Health Organization. Ebola disease. Accessed July 2, 2026.
2. World Health Organization. Ebola virus disease. Fact sheet. Accessed July 2, 2026.
3. World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa. Ebola virus disease FAQ - vaccine. Accessed July 2, 2026.
4. Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. Bundibugyo virus: what it is and what it is not. Accessed July 2, 2026.
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ebola outbreaks: historical data. Accessed July 2, 2026.
6. World Health Organization. Ebola disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo. Disease Outbreak News. Published May 16, 2026. Accessed July 2, 2026.
7. World Health Organization. Ebola disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo. Disease Outbreak News. Published May 16, 2026. Accessed July 2, 2026.
8. World Health Organization. Ebola disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo. Disease Outbreak News. Published May 29, 2026. Accessed July 2, 2026.
9. World Health Organization. Ebola disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo. Disease Outbreak News. Published June 8, 2026. Accessed July 2, 2026.
10. World Health Organization. Ebola disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo. Disease Outbreak News. Published June 13, 2026. Accessed July 2, 2026.
11. World Health Organization. Ebola disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo. Disease Outbreak News. Published June 19, 2026. Accessed July 2, 2026.
12. World Health Organization. Ebola outbreak - DRC 2026. Situation overview. Accessed July 2, 2026.
13. World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa. Ebola Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda. Weekly External Situation Report 01. Accessed July 2, 2026.