WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/world/africa/ebola-congo-uganda-who-public-health-emergency.html

by zzzeek • 2 months ago

328 150 2 months ago

MontagFTB• 2 months ago

Multiple articles mention a vaccine for the Zaire strain but not this one. Is it possible to use one for the other? Does the existence of one make it easier to develop another?

Insanity• 2 months ago

Technically (nitpicking) it mentions no _approved_ vaccine. There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries.

But I have no clue how far along vaccines are, and even if they exist how feasible it would be to use in e.g Congo. Similar to how we can treat tuberculosis, yet many people keep dying of it.

mschuster912• 2 months ago

There can be vaccines without being approved for use in said countries.

Unfortunately, the hotbed being Africa makes the situation much worse given historical events - the entire continent has a dark history regarding colonial and modern abuses of power for medical "experiments" [1], and the entire topic resurfaced during the early Covid era [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_experimentation_in_Afr...

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/8/medical-colonial...

plombe• 2 months ago

Non-paywalled link: https://apnews.com/article/congo-ebola-uganda-who-africa-eme...

lanyard-textile• 2 months ago

Notably (from NPR):

However WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed in a statement it "does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency" and advised countries against closing their borders.

dkga• 2 months ago

I suspect this is to mitigate perverse incentives for countries to avoid reporting outbreaks and collaborating with the WHO for fear of tanking their economy

thinkcontext• 2 months ago

I read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains. I'm no epidemiologist but being less deadly could allow it to spread further, which is obviously concerning.

Also, the article says surveillance picked up the spread late. I wonder if the US's pulling back from the WHO and other international functions had anything to do with this, it used to make up a big chunk of its resources and staff.

microtonal• 2 months ago

Also worrying that the existing approved vaccine does not protect against this variant.

That said I'm quite hopeful, since there is a vaccine for other strains.

BLKNSLVR2• 2 months ago

I was wondering about that with the hantavirus, whereby if it's got a higher fatality rate then it's less likely to be easily transmitted.

Is that like a general rule, or pure bunk? (I'd probably assume the answer 'depends').

RobotToaster• 2 months ago

I don't think it's just fatality rate, but also how long it takes to kill you. HIV is a great example of a disease that (untreated) has near 100% mortality rate, but can spread because it takes years to kill you.

alamortsubite• 2 months ago

Definitely, but the hantavirus incubation period ranges from 1-8 weeks after exposure.

fpaf• 2 months ago

From COVID-era discussions (when virologists were briefly the stars of every talk show) I remember one explaining that it was less about fatality rates per se and more about the length of time you could carry the virus around and be nearly asymptomatic while still able to infect others.

I understand the jury is still out on whether a virus can be considered "alive" but, like us, it is capable of replicating itself and mutating. In that sense, it benefits from the same evolution strategies as more complex beings: a strain that gets its host very sick very quickly gets a lower chance to spread to a new host and multiply.

This creates an evolutionary advantage for strains of that virus that are less aggressive or at least develop the worst symptoms more slowly and more covertly.

jimberlage• 2 months ago

Plague, Inc (an iOS game where you control the parameters of a pandemic and try to get a 100% infection rate) will give you a really good feel for the math behind this.

The most successful strategy is to make a virus that spreads fast, with few visible symptoms until the late stages of the disease. A deadly virus, early will just cause borders to be locked and the international research community to swarm on a cure.

rolph• 2 months ago

this is a case specific example of a dynamic that may exist dependent on the properties of the pathogen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxomatosis#Australia

there are ways to escape the dynamic, such as latency of deleterious symptoms

Jach• 2 months ago

"It depends" is usually a safe (if not always helpful) answer. The older idea was that viruses always evolve to be less virulent/deadly, but that didn't match observations. The newer idea is simply that of a virulence-transmission trade-off. But there are various assumptions behind both ideas, and not all viruses follow those assumptions, so.. it depends. A decent review: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10066022/

picsao• 2 months ago

The WHO is just another politically subverted organization. It declared covid for half an eternity as not airborne. If its connected with a loos of face or economic short term losses- many actors will put the pressur on to prevent the declaration of an pandemic or other travell restrictions.

The us is not involved in this mess.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

us is not involved in this mess

If by not involved you mean still massively subject to the public health and econonomic consequences of a containment failure, then sure.

mentalgear2• 2 months ago

It figures: Right before the COVID-19 outbreak, Trump dismantled the White House pandemic response team and pushed to downsize the CDC—later pulling out of the WHO entirely. A new Trump term, a new pandemic?

mschuster912• 2 months ago

In this case I'd guess the DOGE cuts to foreign aid are a massive, massive contributor to the problem. A lot of third-world countries heavily relied on USAID et al to keep basic sanitation and healthcare going.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

read elsewhere that this strain is less deadly than previous strains

"Case fatality rates in the past two [Bundibugyo virus disease] outbreaks, reported in Uganda and in DRC in 2007 and 2012, have ranged from approximately 30% to 50%" [1]. Given "as of 15 May, a total of 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths" were reported, the current disease's 33% fatality rate is in the historic range.

[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 months ago

Lower fatality rate (and longer gestation times) are things that make a disease spread farther (not necessarily faster -but we take care of that, with international travel).

The OG Ebola had almost 100% fatality rate, and a short gestation time (I think only a few days). It didn't spread too far. The one that killed a few thousand people, though, had about a 50% fatality rate, and I think its gestation period was a bit over a week (these are the products of a faulty memory, but quoting LLM output isn't considered polite, hereabouts, and, for all we know, they could hallucinate the stats, anyway). Also, a hemorrhagic fever pretty much chews up your organs, so it's likely to drive bad health outcomes, for the rest of our lives, even if we survive.

HIV/AIDS has (the meds just keep it at bay) a 100% fatality rate, but a very long gestation period.

COVID, I believe, had about a 1% rate, in the OG variant, and that brought the world to a standstill. I think Spanish Flu (another world standstill), had about 2.5%, and a relatively short gestation period, but it was also quite communicable.

whynotmaybe• 2 months ago

It's been picked up late because it's from Goma, a region in Congo currently operated by the March 23 Movement a "rebel" group against the current Congo's government.

sofixa2• 2 months ago

To expand on this, it's universally accepted that they're a group backed by Rwanda, and are there for the resources that the DRC has, which are being trafficked to Rwanda for export.

delichon• 2 months ago

GDP per capita, $1,884. I don't think poverty is a coincidence. Helping them become wealthy is a global health priority.

jmyeet4• 2 months ago

First hantavirus now this. Look, there's valid reason to be concerned here but people who are fearing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic are seemingly missing why Covid was a pandemic. Covid spread so much for four main reasons:

1. It could spread airborne;

2. It spread relatively easily. Not quite measles-level of contagiousness but still, pretty good;

3. Unlike something like the flu, there really wasn't any kind of natural resistance. What we now call the modern flu is a descendant of the Spanish flu that killed tends of millions in 1919-1920 in its first outbreak and it becamse less lethal for a variety of reasons; and

4. (This is the big one) It would spread when the carrier was asymptomatic. The flu can also spread asymptomatically but AFAIK it's less common. People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms.

Still, what's probably most concerning about Covid is the number of people who truly believe it was and is fake. The public health implications of that as well as the societal and psychological impacts is something we're going to be studying for decades to come.

The exact contagion mechanism for hantavirus isn't confirmed. Previously it's been from, say, rat to human. It's believed there was human-to-human transmission with the plague cruise ship of doom but whatever the case, it's simply not as contagious.

Ebola generally requires contact to spread. How it's spread in a lot of these African regions has historically been from funeral rites. Family of the deceased would touch the body and this contact would spread the disease. So while it was quite contagious, it didn't spread airborne (as far as we know). It's also quite lethal, which naturally tends to limit spread. The king of long-dormant viruses is of course HIV.

But at least we aren't dealing with cordyceps [1] so we've got that going for us at least.

[1] https://thelastofus.fandom.com/wiki/Cordyceps_brain_infectio...

ticulatedspline• 2 months ago

forgot 5. Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1% which made it easy to "roll the dice" on making containment harder.

the__alchemist• 2 months ago

It was good practice for pandemic response. I think (blasphemy, which on its own is wild) the global reaction was too strong on an acute level, but was worth it as prepararion for a deadlier pandemic.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

Covid was exactly the right amount of deadly, 0.5-1%

Tough to say that's "exactly the right amount of deadly" for a pandemic when the Black Death and Spanish flu killed larger fractions of their total affected populations (in the latter case, of humans) [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics_and_pandemic...

jandrewrogers• 2 months ago

The IFR for COVID was ~0.1%, about the same as measles.

trvz2• 2 months ago

People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms.

Do you have any other fantasy tales you’d like to tell?

pixl972• 2 months ago

Yea, I recently caught flu from someone else that "could not miss their work". So these things don't really apply well to the US at all.

gib444• 2 months ago

I swear there is an element of the virus that drives you out of isolation, to spread it?.

It always goes like this with me, the first few days:

- Hm, am I coming down with something? Not too sure. Feel a bit under the weather

- I'm feeling great! Let's go shopping/for coffee/to the supermarket/see friends

- OHH I definitely have flu

jmyeet4• 2 months ago

The world is bigger than the US. Also, not everybody in the US is an underpaid service worker with no benefits. Also, if you limit yourself to just the US, you're still just wrong [1]:

Approximately one-quarter (26%, n = 303/1169) of adults (aged 16–64 years) with self-reported ILI took time off work for their illness for a mean of 3.3 days, compared with 31% (n = 31/99) and 20% (n = 3/15) of those with confirmed influenza A or B, respectively, who reported missing a mean of 3.8 and 3.0 days.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9748403/

BLKNSLVR2• 2 months ago

Just finished watching the last episode of season 2 with my daughter this morning. Now biting my nails for another 6-12 months awaiting season 3... Dammit.

radu_floricica• 2 months ago

2, 3 and 4 apply to the hantavirus as well.

reed1234• 2 months ago

Hantavirus does not easily

rob_c• 2 months ago

"no evidence of human to human transmission", was something repeated far too often and far too politically for me to take them serious on the next issue, serious or not.

"It would spread when the carrier was <LARGELY> asymptomatic" , the largely is very important here otherwise containment would have been a lot different.

The main concerns for covid were also limited to a novel strain of a known virus type (again a KNOWN TYPE) being released into a global general populous with no inherent immunity. Aka expect ~5% of cases to probably have complications and some smaller %-age of that to be serious. If we didn't know what covid was we wouldn't be calling it "covid-19" to expressly describe which genus we're talking about. (Followed by general stupidity from people of pretending we don't know how other covid strains progress (regardless of any 'novel' effects)). Sill no sensible scenario put death rates >1% for anyone not in an at risk group. I mean everyone forgets the south-park sars skit that there's a 97% chance of catching that practically without symptoms. Why this became polarised about steam rolling through untested technology onto the populous is identical to the "green coal" and "tech will solve the carbon footprint" thinking...

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

Covid turned into a pandemic because it wasn't taken seriously at the start. (Looking at you, China.)

Public-health experts never seemed concerned about hantavirus. They are with this. It's appropriate to take their declarations seriously.

Ebola generally requires contact to spread

"Human infection occurs through close contact with the blood or secretions of infected wildlife, such as bats or non-human primates, and subsequently spreads from person to person through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or contaminated surfaces. Transmission is particularly amplified in health-care settings when infection prevention and control (IPC) measures are inadequate, and during unsafe burial practices involving direct contact with the deceased" [1].

So yes on traditional burial. But much easier to spread than HIV.

[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

jmyeet4• 2 months ago

First, we still don't know the origins of Covid-19. The most accepted answer is zoonotic origin but there are problems with that, namely that Wuhan is far from the suspected bats and there is no documented case of Covid-19 in any wild population. The other competing theory is the "lab leak" family but again there's no evidence of this eitehr. Research and findings of Covid-19 in Italian sewerage suggest that Covid-19 might've been circulating in Italy in 2019 [1]. So another possibility is that Covid-19 resulted from forming a virulent strain in a person who was infected with multiple strains at once [2].

We may never know the true origins of Covid-19.

So with asymptomatic spread and a novel virus, it's unlikely that whatever China did actually mattered at all. Once cases reached the US in particular, it was game over. People just can't miss work. There were very few places that maintain zero Covid for any significant period of time (eg Australia) through a combination of luck, geography and extreme quarantine. By geography I mean Australia doesn't have any land borders. And even then it only lasted so long.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7428442/

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9059428/

iJohnDoe2• 2 months ago

China actually took COVID extremely seriously from the start. They were snatching people from the streets and killing them. The China crematoriums were running non-stop.

It was the US Administration and the Republicans that were the dipshits and turned a health situation into politics.

lucb1e4• 2 months ago

4. (This is the big one) [...] People with the flu tend to self-isolate showing symptoms.

Even if optimistically 80% of people do that (in western europe I'd guess it's more like 45%+/-20, might be better elsewhere), if the spreading ability is high (points 1 and 2), you get a bus full of people infected by the two out of ten individuals that decide calling in sick isn't worth it

Technically you can only call in sick when you are literally not able to do your job, and that's not the case if you're just coughing and feel cold or so. Even if your employer might prefer that you don't take the whole team down with you, people's judgement seems to very much be on the "it'll be fine" side. Idk that this is 'the big one' outside of a 2-out-of-100 years pandemic situation where people are exceedingly careful and paranoid

jeffrallen• 2 months ago

could spread airborne

...and even though it was more or less immediately clear it could, the public health authorities dragged their feet admitting it was spreading via airborne transmission (to preserve PPE for healthcare workers), allowing it to get way more out of control than it would have.

Ebola is no laughing matter, it takes cargo planes full of chlorine and plastic sheeting to contain. But it is "easy" to contain if you respect it and do the necessary. And because a big part of "the necessary" is social, and it "luckily" recurs in the same societies, people get better and better at containing it.

Wishing my MSF and WHO friends the best.

Izkata2• 2 months ago

4. (This is the big one) It would spread when the carrier was asymptomatic.

This was also quickly found to be false. From memory the spread was 98.8% symptomatic, 1.2% pre-symptomatic, and 0% symptomatic. Granted you can't tell pre-symptomatic from asymptomatic beforehand, but with such a low proportion of infections being in that category it shouldn't have been a concern.

HDBaseT2• 2 months ago

Most people don't think COVID-19 was/is "fake" per se. Most people just think the situation was overblown.

It is a sickness most analogous to the common cold or flu. Both of which suck, both of which you SHOULD self-isolate for, although the conditions, spread and death toll is effectively the same (or lesser) than that of the cold or flu. Which no matter how you spin it, the Global restrictions were too harsh.

jmyeet4• 2 months ago

The majority of people believe something fake about Covid [1]. While the number of people who think it was a hoax or otherwsise completely fake is pretty low, I've seen figures that it was as high as 13% in the early pandemic, which is millions of people.

We still have people who believe in ivermectin, don't believe in vaccines and somehow still think the vaccine is more dangerous despite there being at least 7 million Covid deaths recorded and, well, 7 million fewer vaccine deaths.

The health and hospital system was in total collapse. The lockdowns helped slow the spread. Were it not for that, many more would've died. Even so, we had not enough ventilators such that doctors and nurses essentially had to choose who lived and who died. The collective trauma on healthcare workers is something we'll be dealing with for years.

What really scares me is how otherwise educated people can fall for the misinformation and absolutely nothing will convince them otherwise. It's basically a mind virus with no cure.

[1] https://www.kff.org/health-information-trust/covid-19-misinf...

tim333• 2 months ago

You missed lab origin and cover up during the initial spread.

thrownthatway3• 2 months ago

The headline from the WHO reads:

Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern

https://www.who.int/news/item/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-t...

mentalgear2• 2 months ago

Your linked article is dated at

17 July 2019

(people never seem to look for/check dates any more)

wizzwizz4• 2 months ago

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), their recent article claims the same thing: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d...

Pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article 12 - Determination of a public health emergency of international concern, including a pandemic emergency of the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR), the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), after having consulted the States Parties where the event is known to be currently occurring, is hereby determining that the Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), but does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency, as defined in the IHR.

alt227• 2 months ago

Its even in the pasted url!

thrownthatway3• 2 months ago

Ooops.

Yeah that was not intentional.

soupspaces• 2 months ago

adding it to my list of apocalypses to prepare for

asah• 2 months ago

seems like an abuse of the word "global"

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

seems like an abuse of the word "global"

The WHO language is "a public health emergency of international concern," but not "a pandemic emergency."

etiam• 2 months ago

No, if it makes to a busy long distance travel hub, there is ample cause for global. Everywhere should contribute to containing this, out of pure self-interest if nothing else.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

This is the WHO announcement: https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d...

This is our CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/ebola/situation-summary/index.html

And yes, this is a big deal. Public health emergencies of international concern are a short list consisting of, in their entirety: swine flu ('09 to '10), polio ('14 on), ebola ('13 to '16), Zika ('16), ebola ('19 to '20), Covid ('20 to '23), monkeypox ('22 to '25) and now this [1]. It's one step down from a pandemic emergency (which, to be clear, has not been declared).

(Helpful explainer: https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2....)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_emergency_of_int...

cm21873• 2 months ago

No it's not a big deal. Ebola is deadly if you catch it but it is not very contagious at all. You need to be in contact with someone's fluids basically. It can't go very far.

Retric3• 2 months ago

If it was that simple Ebola wouldn’t ever spread and nobody would bother trying to contain it. Instead it’s relatively easy to contain but still requires active effort.

EGreg• 2 months ago

Ebola can mutate and this would no longer be true

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

Ebola is deadly if you catch it but it is not very contagious at all

This isn't straight Ebolavirus (Zaire), but this thing [1]. We don't have enough data yet to confirm it spreads like Ebola among humans.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus

saati3• 2 months ago

The only actually serious one on that list is Covid, and the title and the nyt are lying, they declared an international emergency, not a global one, there is no chance this spreads outside of sub-saharan Africa.

Arodex2• 2 months ago

The only actually serious one on that list

Based on what? The final body count?

This isn't a weather forecast, people and ressources flew towards making sure these emergencies didn't spiral into global pandemics.

You are falling face first into the preparedness paradox.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

only actually serious one on that list is Covid

That's the only one on the list that turned into a pandemic emergency.

they declared an international emergency, not a global one

...you're mincing words in a silly way.

there is no chance this spreads outside of sub-saharan Africa

Not what the public-health experts are saying! We currently don't actually know where it's gone. Given multi-week incubation periods, we won't know for a couple weeks where it is right now.

Keep in mind that eastern DRC and South Sudan are host to multiple internationalised conflicts right now. There are easy ways this could spread to the Gulf, Russia, America or Asia through troops and trade.

taegee• 2 months ago

It's one step down from a pandemic emergency (which, to be clear, has not been declared).

Well, no wonder. Ot was introduced only in June 2024.

mgh2• 2 months ago

Nobody is going to take you seriously if you have shown how greed and corruption led to your mistake in COVID - sponsored by China

ls612• 2 months ago

We went through this whole song and dance in 2014. Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations it won’t spread well outside the tropics.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

Unless it has some really unlucky novel mutations

2014 was Ebolavirus proper (Zaire, I believe). This outbreak is this fucker of a chimera [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundibugyo_ebolavirus

SoftTalker2• 2 months ago

"It is unclear how that [closure of US-AID program] might have affected the response to this outbreak."

But, we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

we'll just throw that in to the story anyway, even though we have no facts either way

We don't have a tight chain of causation. But we have plenty of facts pointing entirely one way.

We know there was "a critical four-week detection gap between the onset of symptoms of the presumed index case...and the laboratory confirmation of the outbreak" [1]. This has contributed to "significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread associated with this event at the present time" [2]. And tying all of this back to DOGE, we know USAID's "more than 50 staffers dedicated to outbreak response" were cut to "just six people to handle Ebola, Marburg virus, mpox and bird flu preparedness" [3].

Musk and Trump didn't cause this outbreak. But we would have had a better chance of catching this sooner, and with more precision, if we had those resources there.

[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2...

[2] https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-d...

[3] https://www.spyuganda.com/another-one-us-cuts-aid-to-fight-e...

Take8435• 2 months ago

Just wondering, do you think it's not relevant to help the reader understand context on the US' impact? Positive or negative?

SoftTalker2• 2 months ago

The larger paragraph I pulled that from strongly implies that it's a negative, but then they weasel by throwing in the "it's unclear how that affected anything" line.

Tyrubias• 2 months ago

It’s unclear because we don’t yet know all the consequences of the shutdown of USAID. But, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to wonder if the closure of an agency that worked extensively in developing countries worldwide and might have had front line data about this outbreak could have affected the response.

ViktorRay• 2 months ago

Many of the people worrying about this should stop worrying.

The average commentator on this website, if he or she dies this year, will be more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident or due to the complications of cardiovascular disease, or due to cancer.

If you’re going to spend time worrying, worry about all those things instead. When it comes to infectious diseases, the flu is more likely to kill the people here than hantavirus or Ebola. Make sure to get your flu vaccines.

JumpCrisscross11• 2 months ago

You're right that this shouldn't cause worry. But it should command attention. At least as much as that stupid hantavirus nothingburger did.

nailuj• 2 months ago

This misses the point. The individual health risk might be low, the societal response to the risk might severely impact your life regardless of your personal risk exposure.

prism56• 2 months ago

But I do worry a bit about dying in a car accident, it's why I wear my seatbelt, drive safe, try to drive defensively.

Adding both those risks together still is a higher risk than before...

wartywhoa23• 2 months ago

The risk of dying is 100% for everyone alive.

RetroTechie• 2 months ago

So just to be clear: wearing your seatbelt will increase your chances of death-by-falling-coconut. Or Ebola. Take your pick.

AbstractH244• 2 months ago

Didn’t they do this like a decade ago?

jaspervanderee• 2 months ago

You can expect a lot of these kinds of fear based message hurled into the world in the upcoming years.

1970-01-01• 2 months ago

The nice thing about the DRC is there isn't a few billion people living in it. If this was China or India it would be right back to 2019 levels of growth. There is a huge population damper before it can become global pandemic.

WHO declares Ebola outbreak a global health emergency

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