Transcript - Update on Ebola Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, 5/18/2026

Please Note: This transcript is not edited and may contain errors.

00:01:08 Operator

Good afternoon; thank you for all standing by. For this portion of today's call, all listeners are in a listen only mode until the question and answer.

At that time credentialed members of the media press can press star one to ask a question or star 2 to withdraw the question. This call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I'll now introduce Mister Benjamin Haynes. Thank you, sir; you may begin.

00:01:32 Benjamin Haynes, CDC Moderator

Thank you Dustin, and thank you all for joining us today for an update on CDC 's Ebola response. Dr. Satish Pillai will give an update, and then we'll go ahead and take your questions, I'd now like to turn the call over to Dr. Pillai.

00:01:46 CAPT Satish Pillai, MD, MPH, Incident Manager for CDC's Ebola Response

Thanks Ben, and thank you all for joining us. As you can imagine, this is a highly complex situation, and I want to assure you that CDC and our federal government partners have been working around the clock to ensure information is confirmed and accurate and that action plans are developed and executed with urgency.

I can now confirm that there is one case of Ebola in an American who was exposed as part of their work in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the person developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive late Sunday.

CDC has been working hand in hand with the Department of State to move the American for treatment and care to Germany and other high-risk contacts to Germany for monitoring, given the previous experience for caring for Ebola patients coupled with the flight times being significantly shorter. This allows us to get these persons to points of care quickly.

We want to thank our German colleagues, the DRC and Ugandan ministries of health involved in facilitating this. I want to remind you that this remains a highly fluid situation, and we will continue to update you as we learn more.

CDC has been reaching out to non-governmental organizations and partners who are in DRC and Uganda to ensure that they're aware of the outbreak and resources that CDC has on infection prevention and control, and viral hemorrhagic fevers are available.

Today CDC, the Department of Homeland Security, and other relevant federal agencies to proactive public health measures to prevent Ebola from entering the United States. Specifically, CDC is enhancing public health screening and traveler monitoring for individuals arriving from the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan, putting entry restrictions on non-U.S. passport holders if they have been in Uganda, DRC, or South Sudan in the previous 21 days; coordinating with airlines and international partners and port of entry officials to identify and manage travelers who may have been exposed to Ebola; enhancing port health protection response activities, contact tracing, laboratory testing capacity, and hospital readiness nationwide; and continuing to ensure that deployment of CDC personnel to support outbreak containment efforts are continuing to be executed.

As I said yesterday, CDC is actively responding to this outbreak in many ways. We have activated our Emergency Operations Center through our country offices in DRC and Uganda. We are providing support for surveillance. contact tracing, laboratory testing, infection prevention and control, border health activities, and community engagement.

We are mobilizing additional support from our headquarters in Atlanta. We've updated our website with the latest information and issued two travel health notices, and we are also engaging with public health and clinical partners here in the U.S. to ensure that everyone has information they need to protect Americans and provide care if needed.

I wanted to clarify that this is the 17th recorded Ebola outbreak in DRC, and again there have only been a couple of Bundibugyo species outbreaks before this one: one in Uganda in 2007 and one in DRC in 2015.

To the American public, the risk to the United states remains low.

Travelers to the region should avoid contact with sick people, report symptoms immediately, and follow our travel guide.

We know this is an evolving situation, and we're learning more every day. We know people remember the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak. CDC is actively involved in this response, and we're working across domestic and international partners. Please note that we are adjusting as we need to. Everything we do is focused on the people affected and the security of Americans here and abroad. Thank you.

00:06:07 Mr. Haynes

Thank you, Dr. Pillai. We're ready to take questions, Dustin.

00:06:15 Operator

If you're a credentialed member of the media, and you would like to ask a question during the call, press star one on your touch tone phone press start 2 to withdraw your question.

You make talk at any time; our first question is from Dr. Jon LaPook from CBS News; go ahead your line is open.

00:06:34 John LaPook, MD, CBS News

Thank you very much. Two quick questions: One is, does this person who is infected have a family And the second is, back in 2023, there was an article from the Journal of Infectious Diseases about use of a recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus-based vaccine to provide some post-exposure protection against the Bundibugyo. And I wonder if anything is being looked at right now. That was a small study, and it was animals, but I wonder what, if anything, is being looked at now in terms of post-exposure treatment or prophylaxis.

00:07:08 Dr. Pillai

Thank you for the question. While I don't want to go into details about individuals and family members, I do, as is CDC policy, you are probably aware of reports from the NGO as well as elsewhere on the, on the web about the relationships. I will start by saying that there is one individual who's symptomatic; there are six other individuals that we are working right now to also move.

And the, the key point here is that we are doing this to ensure that they are at the level of care that they can receive the, either treatment or observation that that's required. Regarding the issues of medical countermeasures: We're working across the interagency to ensure that appropriate therapeutics and are available including post exposure prophylaxis to accompany the individual. Over.

00:08:17 Dr. LaPook

Thank you very much but you can't tell us whether it's a member of the same family. Who are the 6?

00:08:26 Dr. Pillai

I'm sorry, sir, like there's an individual and they there are and there is a there's a family and there is an and we know that all individuals that are high risk contacts are traveling.

00:08:43 Mr. Haynes

Next question please.

00:08:46 Operator

Next question from Melody Schreiber from The Guardian US; go ahead your line is open.

00:08:51 Melody Schreiber, The Guardian US

Yeah, thank you so much for doing this, and many questions. First one is about our ability to track this outbreak. And the NIH lab, as far as I know, in Frederick Maryland, was closed down last year. On Ebola, what is our, what, what exactly are we doing globally when you say we're deploying personnel.

How are they assisting? Normally this would have been led by USAID. So what exactly is the is the leadership the U.S. is doing there? Thank you much.

00:09:27 Dr. Pillai

The U.S. has the capacity for testing for Ebola as well as many other viral hemorrhagic fevers and specifically the Bundibugyo species; while I can't speak to the NIH, CDC has, through the laboratory network system, the distributed capacity to test for Ebola virus.

00:09:53 Operator

Our next question is from Jon Cohen calling from Science, go ahead, your line is open.

00:09:53 Mr. Haynes

That's correct.

00:09:59 Jon Cohen, Science

Thank you. How many CDC staff are in DRC now, and how many if any are in Ituri province assisting the Congolese? And if you could compare that to before the Trump administration began its second term, I think that would interest many people, too.

00:10:25 Dr. Pillai

There are approximately 25 individuals in the CDC country office. That hasn't substantially changed, and as I mentioned, we are additionally deploying technical experts that have been requested from Atlanta.

00:10:42 Mr. Cohen

Thank you.

00:10:44 Mr. Haynes

Next question please.

00:10:49 Operator

Next question is from Sophie Gardner from Politico; go ahead your line; is open.

00:10:54 Sophie Gardner, Politico

Hi. Thanks. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit more about why it took so long to identify this outbreak. Was it because this specific strain wasn't showing up on the initial testing, or is different reason?

00:11:11 Dr. Pillai

So, the outbreak is in a volatile part of DRC, and as you pointed out, there has the index case was identified now starting back in April, April first; with the complexities of the situation on the ground, as soon as the cases were confirmed in, we, the CDC was notified by our partners in the ministries of health, and we've been actively responding as soon as there's a confirmed case.

00:11:52

Great, thank you. And I was also wondering if you could just clarify how many technical experts from Atlanta CDC is sending?

00:12:07 Dr. Pillai

Currently we have the request from DRC has been for a senior technical coordinator, and they are rostered to leave imminently, and we will be continuing to surge staff working with our embassy colleagues country office and request and support that the ministry needs. And we have also are meeting specific technical requests from headquarters that they've specifically identified as remote support.

We will, and I, I think that the key point is, anything that the country office and ministry is, is requesting for support, we will be providing remotely as well as in the field.

00:12:51 Mr. Haynes

Next question please.

00:12:53 Operator

Next question from Julie Steenhuyser from Reuters; go ahead your line is open.

00:12:58 Julie Steenhuyser, Reuters

Thank you. I have 2 questions; so the first is that can you clarify that the 6 individuals who have been exposed are in transit to Germany, I just wanna make sure I understood that, and also there are there have been monoclonal antibodies that have been identified as being effective in non-human primates against the strain of Ebola, and I'm just wondering if there are efforts now underway to create a monoclonal antibody therapy that could be used for that purpose?

00:13:38 Dr. Pillai

Yeah, so just to reiterate, the movement plan which is continuing to the manifest and and itineraries are being finalized, and the movement plan is to Germany, for the reasons I mentioned earlier; and the, we are looking at monoclonal therapies.

Our colleagues at the at ASPR BARDA are intimately involved and and point on that and we are providing CDC technical expertise on that issue.

00:14:13 Mr. Haynes

Justin we have time for 2 more questions please.

00:14:17 Operator

OK our next question is from Sherman Desselle from Fox 26 Houston go ahead your line is open.

00:14:24 Sherman Deselle, Fox 26 Houston

Hi so a couple of questions with Houston serving as a host site for the DRC during the upcoming World Cup what specific guidance or enhanced screening protocols is the CDC recommending for like major international transit hubs and host cities expecting a high volume of travelers from these regions that are showing up as affected and other specific metrics or like escalation threats thresholds at the CDC is watching that would trigger stricter travel advisory or mandatory monitoring for athletes traveling from that region in Uganda to the US.

00:15:12 Dr. Pillai

This is an evolving situation, and we're going to continue to work with our interagency colleagues to lock down the the final plans on that so more to follow thank you.

00:15:25 Mr. Haynes

Our last question, please.

00:15:28 Operator

Last question from Meaghan Callaghan from IDSE; go ahead your line is open.

00:15:34 Ms. Callaghan

Hi; thank you for taking my question I just wanted to confirm 2 people thought asked about pipeline therapies that could be available, but as of right now there's no prophylactic or treatment for this strain of Ebola? And then my second question is, I have some sources saying that decreases in funding may have actually played a role in not getting uh diagnostics quick enough to the area; could you respond to that?

00:16:05 Dr. Pillai

Thank you so to your point yes, there are no approved therapeutics or preventive prophylactic measures for Bondibugyo; the therapies that are available are would be under. A protocol for ensuring the safe administration of any required monoclonals or other such therapeutics.

Regarding the second point, I just I want to go back to, the the CDC country office is is working with the ministry and with our implementing partners to ensure that the capacity is in place. We have worked in DRC for decades and we have established partnerships with the the ministry with and have developed networks for testing.

And so, I I wanna kind of I wanna reiterate that our we will continue to support the laboratory diagnostic needs for our ministry colleagues; thank you.

00:17:25 Mr. Haynes

Thank you Dr. Pilla;i thank you all for joining us today; a transcript and audio file will be posted to the CDC media site later today. This will conclude today's call.

00:17:37 Operator

This concludes the conference; thank you for participating; you may disconnect at this time.