There are half a dozen known species of ebolavirus, and after decades of effort the world’s vaccine industry has produced licensed shots for precisely one of them. The virus now spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo is not that one. It is Bundibugyo ebolavirus, the strain for which the WHO says there is no licensed vaccine — and, per its outbreak notices, no specific therapeutic either, though early supportive care is lifesaving. The world made a vaccine for Ebola. It simply bet on a different Ebola.
On Saturday the World Health Organization reported that the Bundibugyo virus has moved into two more health zones — Bulu in Sud Ubangi and Dunghu in Haut Uele — bringing the total to 63 affected health zones across seven provinces. The running count now stands at 7,890 cases and 3,799 deaths, a crude case-fatality rate of 48.1%.
“At the national level, the number of new cases reported each day remains high,” the WHO said, while noting that “the situation varies across the country, with some provinces and health zones experiencing much higher levels of transmission than others.” Then came the sentence that should outlast any communiqué: “The continuously high CFR, and especially the continuous high rate of deaths occurring in communities, highlights the seriousness of the disease and the persistent challenges in timely case detection and access to early and adequate patient care.” Which is the WHO’s careful way of saying the response is learning about a great many of its patients far too late to treat them.
The outbreak was confirmed in mid-May in Ituri province, and an imported case — a Congolese man who died in Kampala — carried it into Uganda almost at once. WHO’s Africa office noted that cumulative deaths crossed 2,000 just 86 days into the outbreak, back in early August; the count has nearly doubled since. The past two Bundibugyo outbreaks killed between 30% and 50% of known cases, so the current 48.1% is, grimly, the virus performing to specification.
None of this has escaped the attention of the world’s foreign ministers, who responded in the customary manner: by convening in New York. The G20+ Foreign Ministers Meeting on Accelerating Collective Action to Defeat Ebola — a title that does most of its accelerating on the podium — produced $2.9 billion in pledges of cash and in-kind assistance, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention announced. The United States added $267 million in health and humanitarian assistance, bringing its total to $887 million; the State Department said the money would fund “new Ebola treatment units, additional safe and dignified burial teams, mass procurements of personal protective equipment, expanded surveillance, critical health commodities, and contact tracing through trusted implementers.”
Africa CDC’s director general, Jean Kaseya, thanked Washington for convening the meeting and then said the quiet part into the microphone. “But pledges alone will not stop Ebola,” he said. “We must be able to trace every single dollar—from commitment to disbursement, from implementing partner to expenditure, and ultimately to the services delivered to affected communities.” It is a polite way of observing that the distance between a press release and a nurse is long, well documented, and mostly travelled by the slowest vehicles in the system.
The measles math
The United States, meanwhile, is producing epidemiological news of a kind a wealthy country has only by choice. The CDC’s confirmed measles count for the year reached 3,659 this week, up 171. Eighteen percent of cases are in children five and under, 43% in those aged five to 19, and 38% in adults; 9% of patients have been hospitalized. Ninety-five percent are unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status.
Officially, the CDC lists one measles death for the year — with an asterisk, because Pennsylvania has reported four measles-associated deaths, and the federal agency is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop a standardized definition of what counts. “This number is subject to change,” the CDC said. America, in other words, now needs a committee to define a measles death. There have been 40 new outbreaks this year — an outbreak being three or more cases — and 95% of all confirmed cases trace to outbreaks that began in 2025 or this year. The totals: 5,948 confirmed cases since the start of 2025, against 285 in all of 2024. That is not a trend line; it is a confession.
Pennsylvania remains the national hot spot, with 890 cases this year and 129 in the past seven days alone, the state health department reported. Lancaster County, where two of the state’s deaths occurred, has 342. Elsewhere, Ohio added nine cases to reach 189, Kentucky added ten to reach 67, and Wisconsin added four to reach 171.
One part of the machine still works
And then there is influenza, the dependable employee, where the global system hums along on schedule. The WHO’s twice-yearly expert meeting has settled the strains for the 2027 southern hemisphere flu season — roughly April through September, sometimes later — drawing on surveillance data from February through August, when A(H1N1)pdm09, A(H3N2) and influenza B viruses dominated. The egg-based vaccine will target A/Missouri/11/2025, A/Darwin1454/2025 and B/Tokyo/EIS13-175/2025; the cell- and recombinant-based versions swap in A/Darwin/1415/2025 and, in a touch nobody at the Pennsylvania health department requested, B/Pennsylvania/14/2025. “This is global public health collaboration at its best,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s director for epidemic and pandemic management.
She is right, and that is the uncomfortable part. The machinery performs beautifully when the virus is predictable, the data flows freely and the deadline is a year away. It performs far less well when the virus is the wrong species for the vaccine, the affected zones are hard to reach, and the first line of response is a ministerial meeting. Bundibugyo Ebola will not be stopped by pledges; it will be stopped, if it is stopped, by treatment units and burial teams that actually arrive. Everything before their arrival is stationery.