1,155 confirmed cases in Congo this morning — and at the U.S. border, the response now includes turning some travelers around. If you're just joining us: Congo's Bundibugyo outbreak has been spreading through conflict-hit eastern provinces, where people are on the move and care is hard to deliver. UNHCR says more than 2 million forcibly displaced people — including over 320,000 refugees — live in the at-risk zones, and mistrust and population movement are making transmission control genuinely harder for teams on the ground. This is Ebola Watch. Today — a peer-reviewed model puts a third country on the map, the CDC quietly changed who gets into the U.S., and I've got a fatality number I can finally say out loud. Cera, start me with the count. We're staying on DRC Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak — follow the show and you won't miss what comes next. Thomson Reuters, with Amindeh Blaise Atabong:
June 25 (Reuters) – The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo has increased to 1,155, including 304 deaths, government data showed on Thursday. The number represented the total of confirmed cases as of Wednesday, according to a situation report that documented 37 new cases and five new deaths in the previous 24 hours.
The update from Kinshasa: 1,155 confirmed cases now, 304 confirmed deaths, with the situation report logging 37 new cases and five new deaths in a single 24-hour window. Okay, so I'm going to say the number out loud, because somebody should — 304 out of 1,155. That's a case-fatality ratio north of 26 percent. It is — with one caveat, Daniel. That's confirmed deaths over confirmed cases, and the report gives us only confirmed figures today. No suspected-case number alongside it, which itself tells you something about how they're counting right now. And officials aren't framing this as a plateau. They're saying community transmission is still growing week-on-week — better detection just means they're catching more of what was already moving. Right — sharper surveillance can look like a rising curve even when it's mostly visibility. But the 37-case day, on top of yesterday's 1,118, doesn't read like an artifact of better counting. The slope is real. Here's CDC:
CDC is assessing travelers arriving in the United States who have recently been in DRC or Uganda, as well as neighboring South Sudan, for symptoms of and possible exposure to Ebola. On May 18, 2026, CDC, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and other appropriate federal agencies announced public health entry screening, entry restrictions, and other public health measures to prevent Ebola disease from entering the United States.
Here's the one I've been waiting all week to say plainly: the CDC page updated June 25 says the U.S. has temporarily restricted entry for certain travelers recently in DRC, Uganda, or South Sudan. If you flew through Entebbe, this can matter at the border, not just in the travel-advisory fine print. And the precision matters, Daniel. U.S. citizens and nationals can still come home — but they go through enhanced public health entry screening. The restriction bites on specified foreign nationals, under an order issued June 21 that runs for thirty days. Thirty days from the 21st. So this is live right now, and it's tied to a DHS order, not just a CDC suggestion someone can wave off at the gate. Right. And notice the geography on this page: DRC and Uganda are treated as active outbreak countries; South Sudan is neighboring, but still screened. The border measure is already wider than confirmed transmission. Which is the part that gets me — South Sudan's on the entry-screening list before the modelers have even called it. The U.S. drew the map one country ahead of the case count. I'd hold the line there, though. Screening neighboring South Sudan is a precaution; it's not a statement that transmission is documented there. Those are different facts, and a traveler deserves to hear which one they're acting on. So the actual to-do for a returning traveler: monitor yourself for symptoms for 21 days after you leave. Fever, anything off — don't get on another plane. Call public health first. Exactly that. Twenty-one days is the incubation window — it's why the screening exists, and it's the one instruction on this page every listener can actually carry out themselves. Jennifer Rigby and Emma Farge, writing in Thomson Reuters:
The current outbreak was found late because the most common tests detect Zaire, not Bundibugyo. And unlike for Zaire, there are no vaccines or treatments to help tackle it, although treatment trials start next week. The lack of data on how to spot the disease is still causing problems, Congolese officials and doctors said, particularly because the early symptoms are also common in other diseases like malaria, and seem to start mildly for Bundibugyo, meaning people may delay seeking care.
The part that stopped me cold: WHO emergencies director Chikwe Ihekweazu says they're, quote, just beginning to understand this outbreak. We're a month and 1,155 confirmed cases in, and the people running the response are still figuring out the basics. And there's a concrete reason for that, Daniel. The standard rapid tests detect Ebola Zaire — not Bundibugyo. So the tool that's supposed to catch Ebola missed this early, and the outbreak got a head start before anyone confirmed what strain they were dealing with. For scale — the two prior Bundibugyo outbreaks, Uganda in 2007 and Congo in 2012, caused roughly 200 cases combined. We're already past 1,100. This is the largest outbreak of this strain ever recorded, by a wide margin. Which is exactly why "beginning to understand" lands so hard. There's no licensed vaccine for Bundibugyo, no approved treatment — so the detection gap and the care gap are the whole game right now. News Medical writes:
A rare strain of Ebola that began spreading undetected in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in early April 2026 has now confirmed transmission in Uganda and is potentially on course to reach South Sudan, according to a new modelling study from the World Health Organization (WHO) published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.
This WHO modelling study in The Lancet puts it plainly: the Bundibugyo strain has moved beyond Congo. Confirmed transmission in Uganda, and potentially on course for South Sudan. And the discipline there, Daniel — Uganda is confirmed, documented transmission. South Sudan is modeled probability. The study holds those apart, and so should we. Fair. But listeners still need to know why a third country is on the map. Walk us across it in plain terms — eastern DRC, into Uganda, with the model's arrow pointing north toward South Sudan. The piece that lands hardest for me is the timeline. Retrospective work puts the first case in early April — about six weeks before the May 15 declaration. The virus was moving through communities before anyone was officially looking. Here's The African Mirror:
UN agencies warned that the epidemic is inflicting hardship well beyond health facilities. Ugochi Daniels, Deputy Director General for Operations at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said households and livelihoods are under severe strain. “Everyday life has become fraught with risk,” she said. “The journey to feed your family or earn a living can also become a journey into danger.”
What stops me here is the speed. 250 deaths in 37 days — the West Africa epidemic took 78 days to hit that same number, and the 2018 DRC outbreak took 130. That's WHO's Dr. Mahamud, just back from a month on the ground, calling it the largest confirmed-case count in the first month of any recent African outbreak. The point is speed: how fast this outbreak hit those milestones. One thing to keep straight, Daniel — these are 1,048 confirmed cases as of Monday in this report. We heard the 1,155 figure earlier in the show. Same outbreak, but the count is moving fast enough that two days of sourcing already diverge. Right, and either number tells the same story. The curve isn't flattening. I've spent the week waiting to see if the optimism held up — it didn't. And IOM's Ugochi Daniels is flagging what the case count alone hides — households, livelihoods, everyday life under strain. The outbreak isn't only in the treatment centers. If Ebola Watch helps you stay grounded in outbreak facts, try Measles Outbreak Daily: daily U.S. measles case counts, MMR vaccine policy, and outbreak tracking for parents, teachers, and clinicians who want real numbers. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We'll be watching two next steps: treatment trials for Bundibugyo Ebola, expected to start next week, and the CDC's June 21 order keeping targeted entry restrictions in place for 30 days.
You'll find links to every story we covered in the show notes, so if something stood out, you can follow it there and read further.
That's Ebola Watch for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.