Ebola In Congo: What to Know

Indexed: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]First, the Ebola outbreak. They're always terrifying. How concerned should the public be though about what we're seeing right now in the Congo?

[00:00:09]It's important to remember that the Congo, the DRC, often has Ebola outbreaks that occur. They're experienced with Ebola outbreaks. This is obviously not the first Ebola outbreak in the DRC. It's in a remote area. There is at least one case that's been imported to Uganda, but this isn't something that we expect to spread into the general population or spread out of Africa. I think it's going to be logistically challenging because it's in a very remote area of the DRC. And the DRC is also a place that's conflict-ridden, very hard to get resources to these Ebola outbreaks, but this is something that likely will be contained. One challenge is it's not the strain that we have a vaccine for or the strain that we have monoclonal antibodies for. So there's less countermeasures there, but it is something that I anticipate will be contained. Uh, that's good good to hear.

[00:00:52]It does seem like though this Ebola outbreak, I mean, it it spread rapidly at first at least with 65 deaths already. How does this compare to other outbreaks? And can you remind us again what happens when you contract Ebola? So this is a a fairly big Ebola outbreak, but certainly not the biggest. Back in 2014, we had tens of thousands of cases occurring in in West Africa in places like Liberia, Sierra Leone, uh, and and uh, Guinea, which led to importations of cases in certain areas.

[00:01:21]We had cases in the United States. This This is not that. This is in an area that's experienced with Ebola outbreaks.

[00:01:26]And what happens? You usually will begin with flu-like symptoms like many infectious diseases, fever, chills, muscle aches and pain. And as the virus spreads systemically, it causes your blood vessels to get very very leaky.

[00:01:38]Your blood pressure plummets. A lot of losses of fluids from from really bad diarrhea can happen. And then in about half of cases, your blood's ability to clot gets really disturbed and you can have hemorrhages or bleeding. That's why it's called a a viral hemorrhagic fever and can have a very high mortality rate.

[00:01:55]Can reach, you know, into the 60 to 90% range without any if there's no supportive treatment. I pray for all those communities that are affected out there. Uh shifting back to the hantavirus here in the United States, are we are we headed to the relative clear here or is that still way down the road?

[00:02:10]Well, this is a a virus that has a long incubation period, 6 weeks. So, we kind of are on that clock to make sure that we get no new cases, and I suspect we may get more cases from those individuals that were evacuated off the ship. But, the key thing to look for is do we get any secondary cases? So, some individuals who were in contact with people who disembarked early, right now there are zero cases of secondary cases in the world. That's a good sign, but we still have to wait that 6 weeks to know.

[00:02:36]I do think that this is a virus that's really constrained in its ability to spread from person to person. So, this will not be something that spreads into the general public, but we may see more cases in that group of passengers that were evacuated.