The New York Time, June 23, 2026 (with Stephanie Nolen, Samuel Granados, Amy Schoenfeld Walker, and Apoorva Mandavilli)
Health officials say that the Ebola outbreak in East Africa could become one of the worst ever recorded unless the response ramps up. There have been signs of improvement, but many hurdles remain. Here’s what will determine how fast the epidemic can be contained.
An early failure to identify the Bundibugyo virus, the species responsible for the outbreak, followed by a lack of testing equipment, led to major delays in identifying infected people. That has made current case counts almost certainly lower than reality.
Without fast test results, health workers can’t rule out malaria, which has similar early symptoms to Ebola disease. And without rapid confirmation, health workers can’t move on to the next steps: isolation and contact tracing, to prevent further spread.
Congo’s national biomedical research institute, with help from international health agencies, has expanded genetic testing for the virus at the outbreak epicenter and out into potentially affected areas. Most tests are processed the same day.
But challenges remain.
Many samples still have to be transported for hours over rutted dirt roads to central labs. There is no electronic record system in the local health systems, which slows the sharing of results. Many test sites were connected to the internet for the first time just this week.
Another hurdle is persuading people to get tested.
Some infected people will make their way to new Ebola treatment centers, especially if communities gain trust after they see people being saved there. Ideally, each patient would be kept in isolation until they test negative, but there is a shortage of the building materials needed to set up these spaces.
Community testing is also critical for those who don’t go on their own to testing centers, but that process is labor intensive and slow.
Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with permission.