According to the latest official figures, released Sunday by Congolese health authorities, the Ebola outbreak currently raging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has become the deadliest in the country’s history, with 2,325 deaths recorded among 4,945 confirmed cases since it began. The case fatality rate stands at 47 percent, while 1,040 patients have recovered since the outbreak started.
This toll now surpasses the 2,299 deaths recorded during the 2018-2020 outbreak in eastern DRC, which totaled 3,481 cases according to the World Health Organization. Officially declared on May 15, the current outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, is the 17th recorded in the DRC since Ebola was first discovered in the country in 1976.
The death toll has climbed at a particularly fast pace in recent weeks. The 2,000-death threshold had already been crossed around August 10, with 2,061 deaths among 4,449 confirmed cases according to the National Institute of Public Health (INSP). Julien Harneis, the UN’s senior Ebola coordinator, highlighted at the time the speed at which the crisis was spiraling: while it had taken roughly nine weeks for the outbreak to reach 1,000 deaths, it took only about three weeks to record the following 1,000.
The outbreak is heavily concentrated in the northeast of the country, with more than 97 percent of all recorded cases in the provinces of Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu. There is, however, an encouraging sign from South Kivu, which as of early August had gone 75 days without a new confirmed case. Only 19 cases have been reported in neighboring Uganda, mostly linked to people who had traveled from affected areas of the DRC.
The response continues to face major obstacles. Beyond the lack of a proven vaccine against the Bundibugyo variant, efforts are complicated by the remoteness of the affected region and persistent insecurity caused by dozens of armed groups operating in the area. The Congolese government continues to deploy a multisectoral response plan nonetheless, with teams of doctors, epidemiologists, and community health workers sent to the five affected provinces, supported by technical and financial partners.