DRC Ebola deaths surge past 1,300 as outbreak spreads faster than ever recorded

The Democratic Republic of Congo is in the grip of an Ebola outbreak moving faster than any documented in human history. As of Saturday, the death toll had climbed above 1,354—a jump of more than 40 percent in just five days. The confirmed case count stood at 3,075, representing a 27 percent increase from the previous week. The speed is what makes this moment different. The deadliest Ebola outbreak on record, which ravaged West Africa between 2013 and 2016, killed more than 11,000 people across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. That epidemic took eight months to reach its first thousand deaths. This one has done it in less than ten weeks.

The virus circulating in the DRC is Bundibugyo, the rarest of the four known Ebola variants that infect humans. There is no approved vaccine. There is no proven treatment. Abdulsalami Nasidi, a public health consultant who helped establish the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Al Jazeera the virus was "spreading like a wildfire." The comparison is apt. Without pharmaceutical tools to slow transmission, responders are left with the oldest weapons: isolation, contact tracing, and the ability to reach people before the virus does. That ability is fracturing.

The outbreak is unfolding in the northeastern province of Ituri, an area gripped by armed conflict. Insecurity has made it nearly impossible for response teams to access entire communities. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the true number of cases could be more than double the official count. Contact tracing now reaches roughly 80 percent of known contacts, but there are villages response teams cannot reach at all. The political situation is not separate from the medical crisis—it is the crisis. Tedros has called for a ceasefire, arguing that medical resources alone cannot contain an epidemic when armed groups control access to the sick.

The health system itself is collapsing under the weight. More than 100 health workers have been infected since the outbreak was declared in May. Around 35 have died. They are working without adequate protective equipment, in facilities where residents have attacked staff and set buildings ablaze, questioning whether the disease is even real. Last week, dozens of workers at Rwampara General Hospital near Bunia went on strike over unpaid wages and unsafe conditions. On Saturday, approximately 100 workers at the Elikya Ebola Treatment Centre in Bunia stopped work for the same reason. Martin Bolombi, one of the striking workers, told the Associated Press: "We need to be paid, because in the meantime the disease is spreading at the treatment centre. I've already had five people die who are still inside there. A solution must be found for us." The centre's activities were largely paralyzed.

There is one thread of hope, thin as it is. On Friday, the University of Oxford's Oxford Vaccine Group administered the first dose of an experimental Bundibugyo vaccine to a volunteer. Katrina Pollock, the trial's chief investigator, called it "an important milestone" and "the next phase in our multinational collaborative journey." The vaccine exists only because researchers moved at extraordinary speed. But a vaccine in trial is not a vaccine in arms. It will take months to know if it works, and months more to manufacture and distribute it if it does.

Jean Kaseya, the Africa CDC Director-General, wrote on social media last week: "We must act now. If we do not stop it today, this will become the worst outbreak the world has ever documented." The United States and Canada have restricted entry for travellers recently in the DRC—measures that contradict WHO guidance from May, when the organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency. The world is watching from a distance, closing borders while the virus moves through villages where armed groups control the roads and health workers are walking out because they have not been paid.