Congo's Ebola outbreak likely began months before May detection, research suggests

Long before the Democratic Republic of Congo formally declared an Ebola outbreak in May 2026, the Bundibugyo variant was already moving silently through communities in Ituri Province — misread as malaria, mourned at funerals, and carried across distances by the time any laboratory confirmed its name. Genome sequencing now places the likely origin as early as February, a gap of months between the virus's first movements and the world's first response. It is a familiar human story: the danger that arrives quietly, wearing the face of something ordinary, and the cost of the time it takes to be se