Ebola Cases Reach 11,145 at Six-Month Mark

Confirmed Ebola cases have reached 11,145 in the multi-country Bundibugyo outbreak, and 5,437 people have died. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention gave the figures on November 13, 2026, six months after the outbreak began. Another 3,058 patients have recovered.

The death count works out to 48.8 percent of confirmed cases. That share hasn't fallen as the outbreak has grown, and it tells the response's central problem plainly. Patients are reaching care late, or they aren't reaching it at all, and each late case leaves contacts untraced.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo holds nearly the whole outbreak. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted 11,021 cases and 5,358 deaths across the region as of November 8, and 10,990 of those cases sat in Congo. The virus has spread across eight Congolese provinces, from Ituri and North Kivu to Tshopo and South Ubangi.

Speed set this outbreak apart from the start. The CDC says the response passed 1,000 confirmed cases within 40 days. Congo's 2018 outbreak took about 235 days to reach the same mark. Africa CDC declared a public health emergency of continental security on May 18, one day after the World Health Organization declared an international emergency.

Wessam Mankoula, an Africa CDC official, told the November 13 briefing that the past six months have shown progress and stubborn gaps at once. Most of those gaps sit in Congo, the epicentre, where insecurity and weak contact tracing keep breaking the chain work. Kenya offers the contrast: it has recorded nine confirmed cases and two deaths, and it has discharged its last patient.

Six months in, the outbreak is the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record, and it doesn't carry a licensed vaccine or an approved treatment for the Bundibugyo strain. The next count will show whether the Congo response can bend a curve that has added roughly a thousand cases in about two weeks.