UN Says It’s Too Early to Say Ebola in DR Congo Has Peaked

Stephanie Soucheray

Ebola Viral Hemorrhagic Fever

European Commission DG ECHO/Flickr CC

On social media posts in the past 24 hours, some government officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have said there are signs the nation’s fast-moving Ebola outbreak has peaked and transmission is slowing, but United Nations (UN) officials urge caution in expressing optimism just yet. 

Daily fatalities linked to the Ebola outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo strain, has fallen from a peak of around 50 deaths per day to nearly 30 currently, said the Minister of Public Health, Roger Kamba, in a video posted X.

“The daily number of new infections is also declining: we have gone from about 120 cases per day at the epidemic's peak to nearly 80 today. For me, these figures represent a positive signal. They show that the efforts deployed on the ground are producing results and that our response strategy is beginning to bend the transmission curve,” said Kamba, who also noted 10 of the 62 affected health zones have recorded no new cases for more than 22 days.

The United Nations (UN) however, is more cautious in its assessment of the outbreak, which officially began on May 15 but likely started weeks earlier in the area around Bunia, DRC. So far there have been 7,258 confirmed cases and 3,510 deaths across seven provinces.

Officials from both the UN and World Health Organization, which is a UN agency, told reporters today it’s too early to determine if transmission has peaked or had a meaningful slowdown. 

There ‌are some areas of progress, but nonetheless, in other areas, we continue to see growth in cases.

"It remains a deadly and a massive epidemic. There ‌are some areas of progress, but nonetheless, in other areas, we continue to see growth in cases," Julien Harneis, MBA, the UN special Ebola coordinator, said at a Geneva press briefing, according to Reuters.

The WHO’s Olivier le Polain, MD, PhD, said: "It's too early to confidently say we have passed a peak."

While cases have dropped off in Ituri province, transmission in North Kivu is still happening at an alarming pace, with most new cases still occurring outside of known transmission chains. 

Cases outpacing West Africa’s 2014-16 outbreak

The current outbreak is the largest in the DRC’s history, and second in size only to the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014 through 2016.  Research published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report says the first 100 days in DRC show an outbreak that’s expanding faster than any previously documented Ebola outbreak.

In the first 100 days after initial detection, there were seven times more Ebola cases in the DRC than in the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. 

During the outbreak’s first 100 days (May 14 to August 21, 2026), 5,458 confirmed cases and 2,606 deaths (48% case-fatality rate [CFR]) were reported across 57 of DRC’s 519 health zones, compared to 759 suspected, probable, or confirmed cases and 467 deaths (62% CFR) reported from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in 2014.

“This outbreak is occurring in areas affected by a protracted complex humanitarian emergency, including ongoing conflict involving armed groups, limited health care and other basic infrastructure, attacks on health workers, and community mistrust,” said the report, written by scientists from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.