Kinshasa says the Bundibugyo Ebola wave has peaked after 3,475 deaths

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said on 15 September that the Bundibugyo-strain Ebola outbreak has reached its peak. Health minister Roger Kamba told reporters that daily new cases have dropped from about 120 to about 80. "We are fighting a very dangerous virus that is killing many of our people. Today, we can say that the outbreak is under control," he said.

The Congolese health ministry's own running total as of 14 September, cited by The Guardian, stood above 7,200 confirmed cases and more than 3,475 deaths. That already makes this the largest Ebola outbreak recorded in the country, ahead of the 2018-2020 North Kivu epidemic, which ended with 3,317 confirmed cases.

Zones falling silent, and zones that have not

Kamba said more than 22 days have passed without a new case in 10 of 62 health zones. Six of those can now be taken off the active list because they have gone more than 42 days without a case, the standard two-incubation window used to declare a zone quiet. Four more have gone more than 21 days. Those figures are how an Ebola outbreak is taken apart on a map. They are not the same as an end to national transmission.

WHO's Disease Outbreak News dated around 7 September, published as DON617, counted 6,757 confirmed cases and 3,267 deaths inside the DRC, a crude fatality ratio of 48.3 percent. Adding 20 cases in Uganda and one in France brought the global confirmed total to 6,778. Two DRC-diagnosed patients were treated in Germany. Ituri remained the centre, with 5,406 of the DRC cases and 28 of its 36 health zones affected. North Kivu, Tshopo, Haut-Uele, Bas-Uele and South Kivu made up the rest. South Kivu had reported no new case since 29 May. Kayna, in North Kivu, was the newest zone on the list.

Those WHO numbers are a week older than Kamba's 14 September ministry tally. The rise from 6,757 to more than 7,200 confirmed cases in a few days is consistent with an outbreak that is still adding tens of cases a day even as the daily peak recedes. Peak means the slope has changed. It does not mean the numerator has stopped.

Why this strain outran the last one

Bundibugyo virus had produced only small outbreaks before 2026. This wave started in the Mongbwalu health zone in Ituri and moved with displacement, cross-border traffic into Uganda and the ordinary mobility of a mining and trading belt. WHO flagged insecurity and population movement as the reasons response teams cannot sit still on a single ring of contacts. There is still no licensed vaccine matched to Bundibugyo the way rVSV-ZEBOV is matched to Zaire ebolavirus. That gap is why BBC World Service scheduled a Business Daily segment this week on how long a new Ebola vaccine is taking.

Case fatality near 48 percent is in the historical range for Ebola disease and higher than the 2018-2020 Zaire-strain outbreak once treatment centres were fully up. Isolation capacity, contact tracing and safe burials decide whether 80 cases a day become 40 or climb back toward 120. Kamba's claim that the outbreak is under control will be tested in the next 42-day window in Ituri and North Kivu, not in the six zones that have already gone quiet.

What "peaked" allows, and what it does not

Donors often treat a peak announcement as a signal to freeze budgets. The ministry's own arithmetic cuts the other way. At 80 confirmed cases a day, a single week still adds more than 500 infections. A 48 percent fatality ratio on that flow is more than 200 deaths a week. The useful public fact on 15 September is the direction of the daily curve and the number of silent zones. The useful caution is that WHO's last formal count was already in the high 6,000s, the ministry is now above 7,200, and the epicentre health zones have not joined the silent list.