Congo Ebola deaths pass 3,000 as Bundibugyo strain spreads across six provinces

The Democratic Republic of Congo recorded 3,007 deaths from Ebola as of 2 September, according to figures released by the health ministry and the National Institute of Public Health. Confirmed cases stood at 6,186. The case fatality rate is 48.6 percent. Officials listed 1,409 recoveries.

Those numbers make the 2026 outbreak the deadliest Ebola epidemic in Congo’s history and the second largest on record after the 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic, which killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Congo’s previous peak, in 2018–2020, killed about 2,300 people from 3,500 reported cases.

The government declared the outbreak in Ituri province on 15 May. Some health officials say transmission may have begun in January or February. The pathogen is Bundibugyo virus, a species first identified in western Uganda in 2007. Unlike Zaire ebolavirus, Bundibugyo has no licensed vaccine and no approved treatment. Candidates from the University of Oxford and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative are still in development.

Ituri remains the centre of the outbreak and accounts for about 84 percent of reported cases, according to a CDC field note published on 1 September that used data through 21 August. By late August the virus had reached six of Congo’s 26 provinces: Bas-Uélé, Haut-Uélé, Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu and Tshopo. Fifty-seven of 151 health zones in those provinces had recorded cases.

The CDC’s Emergency Operations Center activated two days after the May declaration. In its 1 September MMWR note the agency wrote that the rise in cases was “unprecedented,” with about 5,000 cases in 100 days by late August. A later CDC assessment, cited by the Associated Press on 2 September, said containment work “remained below established response targets” and that spread across many health zones showed “uncontrolled expansion of the outbreak.”

The World Health Organization estimates that about 60 percent of deaths occur outside treatment centres. That figure points to a familiar failure in eastern Congo: patients die at home, funerals proceed without safe burial teams, and contact lists go stale. Africa CDC has said the true caseload may be three times the official count because surveillance and contact tracing are weak.

The terrain works against the response. Armed groups operate across Ituri and the Kivus. Displacement camps are crowded. A health workers’ strike has cut clinic hours. Schools reopened during the outbreak, which raised the risk of classroom transmission. Jean-Claude Angwanzia, who left Mambassa for Bunia, told the Associated Press he moved because he did not feel safe.

The United States Centers for Disease Control said this week that it is blocking travellers who have been in Congo in the previous three weeks from boarding flights to the United States. That step follows a pattern used in earlier filovirus emergencies. It does not stop overland movement inside Central Africa, where the immediate risk sits.

WHO has said the outbreak is on a path that could overtake the West Africa death toll if the current speed holds. That comparison is a warning, not a forecast. West Africa’s epidemic ran for more than two years across three national health systems that were already thin. Congo has more prior Ebola experience, including ring vaccination with rVSV-ZEBOV against Zaire ebolavirus. That tool does not apply here.

What the September figures add is a threshold. Crossing 3,000 deaths changes how donors, neighbours and airlines price the event. It also changes the political cost inside Congo, where the state is thin in the same districts that now carry most of the cases. The next sitrep will show whether recoveries can keep pace with new infections. Right now they cannot.