Uganda Reports No Active Ebola Cases as Kenya and Nigeria Infections Put Entebbe Airport Under Scrutiny

On October 3, two travelers who would later be diagnosed with Ebola passed through Entebbe International Airport in Uganda. One was a patient on a journey from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Kenya. The other was a woman heading home to Nigeria. Wessam Mankoula, who leads emergency preparedness and response at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirmed the shared date on Thursday. Investigators are now trying to establish whether their movements overlapped at all.

That question remains open. Health officials say the two may have crossed paths, but it has not been established that they met, or that any transmission happened in the airport. Uganda, for its part, maintains that it has no confirmed active Ebola cases.

In Nigeria, Health Minister Muhammad Ali Pate announced an imported case in the Federal Capital Territory, involving a woman who had recently traveled to East Africa, including Uganda. She developed symptoms on October 7 and went to a private health facility on October 11. Laboratory testing confirmed Ebola, and she was isolated for treatment. Pate said she was stable and that 44 contacts had been identified, among them health care workers, caregivers, other patients and people she may have met while traveling.

Her itinerary has become the center of a dispute. Uganda's Health Ministry said preliminary findings indicated she had gone to eastern DR Congo on business, then passed through Uganda without symptoms on her way back to Nigeria. In an October 20 statement, the ministry added that transit through Uganda does not establish infection there, and that the place of exposure is still under investigation. Switzerland's Federal Department of Foreign Affairs then contradicted that account in a statement to Reuters, saying the woman and her husband did not travel to DR Congo. Swiss authorities identified her as a Swiss national of Ugandan origin, married to a Swiss diplomat based in Abuja. A day earlier, the Swiss government had told Reuters it believed she contracted the virus while traveling with her husband in Uganda, an assessment that has not been independently confirmed. The World Health Organization and Africa CDC said they had received no confirmed information that she had been to DR Congo.

The conflicting accounts leave unresolved where she was exposed and how accurately her movements were first reconstructed. They do not show that she caught the virus in Uganda. Uganda says it is waiting for more detailed information from Nigeria.

In Kenya, the first confirmed Ebola patient died in Nairobi on October 5 after traveling from DR Congo through Uganda. Officials have established that this patient also went through Entebbe on October 3. Kenyan authorities have since reported additional infections linked to that first case. One thread is still loose: according to the Daily Nation, health officials are searching for a Ugandan man listed as a contact of the deceased. Patrick Amoth, Kenya's director-general for health, told the paper that officials know him by name, passport number and phone, but cannot reach him. The newspaper reported he was using a South Sudanese phone number. Being untraced does not mean he is infected, though finding exposed people is essential to stopping further spread.

Uganda shares a long border with DR Congo, where Ebola outbreaks have repeatedly tested health authorities, and trade, migration and air travel complicate efforts to pinpoint exposure. Symptoms typically appear two to 21 days after infection, and the WHO says infected people are not considered infectious until symptoms begin, so even good border screening cannot catch every case. Uganda says it is tightening screening at points of entry, and Nigeria has stepped up contact tracing and infection prevention.

In Abuja, the case has stirred memories of earlier outbreaks. Resident Peace Kolawole told DW she was carrying hand sanitizer and was very concerned. Another resident, Jonathan Steven, said people are no longer worried about sickness but about surviving, reflecting fears that the health system could struggle amid economic hardship.

Uganda's zero-case declaration does not prove all infections are ruled out, and the shared travel dates do not prove an undetected outbreak. Next, Africa CDC will convene an extraordinary virtual meeting of national health officials on October 28, while the search for the missing Kenyan contact and the Nigerian patient's true itinerary continues.