Transcript - Update on Ebola Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda and CDC's World Cup 2026™ activation

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

00:00:00

Operator

Good afternoon and thank you all for standing by; for the duration of today's call all listeners are in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session; at that time credentialed members of the media can press star one to ask a question and star 2 to withdraw a question. Today's call is being recorded; if you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to introduce Mr Benjamin Haynes. Thank you; you may begin.

00:00:26

Benjamin Haynes, CDC Moderator

Thank you Courtney, and thank you all for joining us. CDC continues to support response efforts for the Ebola outbreak in central Africa while also working closely with partners across the country on public health preparedness activities related to the FIFA World Cup. Today we'll hear from two CDC experts on these topics. First Dr. Satish Pillai who is leading CDC 's Ebola response will provide an update on the current outbreak and CDC 's response efforts.

Then we'll hear from Doctor Cria Gregory, Director of Division of State and Local Readiness, who will discuss CDC 's preparedness, preparedness work leading up to and during the World Cup. Following their remarks, we'll then take your questions. I'll now turn it over to Doctor Pillai.

00:01:15

CAPT Satish K. Pillai [suh-TEESH puh-LYE], M.D., M.P.H., Incident Manager for CDC's Ebola response

Thank you Ben, and thank you all for joining us. Again, this remains an active and highly concerning Ebola outbreak, and CDC continues to work closely with federal and international partners to support response efforts and help stop transmission.

Our focus remains on slowing and stopping the spread of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the outbreak in Uganda where. ... As a reminder, Ebola spreads through direct contact with body fluids of a person who is sick with Ebola or who has died from the disease; it does not spread through the air like measles or influenza.

Two weeks ago, CDC published two MMWRs assessing the risks to the United States and modeling what this outbreak could look like in central Africa over the coming months under a range of scenarios. Those, the model reinforces the trajectory of you're seeing currently and shows that strong immediate support is needed to help slow or stop the spread of Ebola in DRC and prevent further spread in the region.

Specifically, and consistent with that modeling, we are now already approaching 1000 confirmed cases across 31 health zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo; in addition, there are 19 cases in Kampala, Uganda, which again underscores a scale and seriousness of this outbreak. This is already the 3rd largest Ebola outbreak on record and the 17th Ebola outbreak identified in DRC since 1976.

CDC continues to work side by side with ministries of health and partners to help stop the rapid spread by further strengthening case finding, contact tracing, laboratory testing, infection prevention and control measures, border health strengthening, and community outreach, again with the specific goals of finding cases faster, isolating patients safely, protecting healthcare workers, and ensuring communities get the clear information about how they can protect themselves and reduce risk.

Through these efforts every day, we're gaining a better understanding of what's happening on the ground, where the gaps are, and allowing us to more strategically focus on stropping the outbreak.

While this outbreak is serious and requires an aggressive international response, the risk to the United States remains low because of the public health measures in place.

We continue to work with our public health and clinical partners domestically to prepare and to ensure processes are in place in the unlikely event there should be a case in the United States.

CDC 's most valuable assets continue to be our CDC country offices and our deployers. As of today, CDC currently has more than 125 staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda working shoulder to shoulder with ministries of health and our long-standing partners.

Among their activities in the past several days: Our team in DRC is collaborating in efforts to improve community acceptance of surveillance, isolation and safe and dignified burials; supporting assessments of ports of entries including airports; and providing technical input for DRC laboratory leaders to get quality diagnostic testing where it is needed.

Critically, we're also working with the government of DRC to support preparedness in provinces immediately west of the outbreak zone to contain the spread of the outbreak, given the recent Ebola case in a more western district within Ituri.

In Uganda our teams are working on rapid facility assessments for infection prevention and control, border health support including airport screening assessments, and continuing to be in daily contact with the Ministry of Health on epidemiologic follow-up of existing cases.

In addition to this direct, boots on the ground support provided by CDC experts, CDC recently accessed $107 million in emergency funding from the infectious disease rapid response reserve fund to expand and accelerate these activities to strengthen both international response and domestic readiness.

I'll close by saying CDC remains committed to working closely with the ministries of health in DRC and Uganda, Africa CDC, other international partners, and U.S. government agencies to contain this outbreak and prevent further spread. I'll now turn it over to Doctor Gregory to discuss CDC 's World Cup preparedness efforts.

CAPT Cria Gregory, Ph.D., Incident Manager for CDC's World Cup 2026^TM activation

Thank you Satish and good afternoon. Today is day 8 of the FIFA World Cup 2026 tournament. As matches continue across the United States, CDC is working with health officials in host cities closely monitoring for signs of illness and ready to act if something is identified.

Planning for the FIFA World Cup 2026 has been a multi-year effort involving CDC, federal partners, and state and local public health agencies across the country.

CDC approached World Cup preparedness through both a risk based and all hazard lens, focusing on strengthening existing public health systems and partnerships rather than creating new systems solely for the tournament. Our planning has accounted for a range of potential public health challenges including communicable diseases, severe weather, heat related illness, and other health and safety concerns that can arise during large international gatherings.

In March, CDC released preparedness guidance for state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments, outlining key considerations for preventing, detecting and responding to potential public health threats potentially associated with World Cup.

Throughout the tournament, CDC has facilitated regular coordination calls with public health officials from all 11 U.S. host sites; along with other federal partners, these call support information sharing, coordination, and real time situational awareness across jurisdictions.

CDC is also supporting enhanced situational awareness to existing surveillance and monitoring systems, including activities that help identify and assess potential public health threats associated with international travel. This includes tools that help jurisdictions monitor public health trends and identify potential threats that may require further investigation.

We continue to support host jurisdictions through technical assistance and personnel deployments including epidemiologists, laboratorians, and other public health experts working at, alongside local teams in several host cities.

CDC 's safety for soccer fans web page, which is located at CDC-dot-gov back slash soccer [correction: https://www.cdc.gov/soccer], serves as a centralized source of health information for visitors, healthcare providers, and public health partners. Additional resources will continue to be added throughout the tournament.

Importantly, our World Cup preparedness activities are closely coordinated with other CDC response efforts, including our Ebola response and port health operations, to ensure a comprehensive approach to protecting public health. With the tournament now underway, coordination among federal state and local partners remains strong.

CDC will continue monitoring conditions closely and stands ready to support jurisdictions as needed, thank you.

Mr. Haynes

Thank you both. Courtney we are now ready to take questions.

Operator

Thank you; if you are a credentialed member of the media and you would like to ask a question please press star one if you need to withdraw your question press star 2. As a reminder, please press star one to join the queue.

Our first question comes from Gabrielle Emanuel from NPR; your line is open.

Gabrielle Emanuel, NPR

Thank you very much. I wanted to follow up on 2 different things. The first is you mentioned that the World Cup health and safety team is coordinating with the Ebola response. I wanted to understand a little bit more about what that looks like and how it plays out on the ground. And the other one is: In the DRC and Uganda, you mentioned collaborating to improve community response and information; can you say more about what that entails and what, yeah, what it looks like? Thank you very much.

00:11:25

Dr. Gregory

The CDC activated for a Level 3 activation for World Cup on June 1^st, so we will be in this posture from June 1^st through the end of July. This is an incident management structure; that's the way that we run all responses, and it really creates a structure that allows for sort of understanding chain of command and engagement across responses. So, it's really allowed us to work very closely with the Ebola response as well as the other active responses such as measles and hanta.

00:11:57

Dr. Pillai

And regarding the second question about supporting in the field: In DRC where the outbreak is currently occurring, it is a highly insecure area with significant security challenges. CDC, however, has implementing partners that we provide technical support. And through those implementing partners such as disease detectives that have been funded to do alert notifications and investigations, case identification, and contact tracing, we have currently 23 field staff that are supporting a range of epidemiologic investigations and support for

The Ministry of Health. And on the Uganda side, similarly, CDC-trained field epidemiologists are a significant component of the activities that are occurring as part of their response. Over.

00:13:01

Mr. Haynes

Courtney if we have other questions we'll take them.

00:13:06

Operator

Our next question comes from Lena Sun from the Washington Post; your line is open.

00:13:11

Lena Sun, The Washington Post

Hi can you hear me.

00:13:14

Mr. Haynes

Yes we hear you Lena; go ahead.

00:13:15

Ms. Sun

OK thanks; so I was wondering if somebody could give an update on the status of the Kenya facility and also to follow up the other question about coordinating between Ebola and World Cup, less on the structure and like what is actually being done for moni. ... I mean just be specific if you could; thank you.

00:13:41

Dr. Pillai

I'll defer questions regarding the Kenya facility to the Department of State which is the lead federal agency. As we've mentioned on previous briefings, CDC will provide technical assistance for the rest of the federal government and in support of outbreak response, but the CDC activities. ... Our focus is on controlling the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, controlling the outbreak in Uganda, and ensuring our domestic readiness to respond in the unlikely event of cases.

Regarding the second question about coordination, I will say that Cria and I are in the Emergency Operations Center on a daily basis; both her teams and my teams have fluid conversations including we have dedicated staff that are speaking with one another. If there are individuals that have questions at the health department, we ensure that there are questions regarding Ebola, Ebola risk, any monitoring issues are related to Cria's team, and so on a day-to-day basis we're one CDC.

00:15:06

Ms. Sun

OK could I have a follow up to that, the you know, of course Ebola is very low risk and we know because it's not nearly as contagious as measles there is a large and growing measles outbreak in not too far from Philadelphia where at least one of the teams is based, and I think there are matches there. Is there any indication or additional surveillance being done to make sure that that outbreak then doesn't spread or you know spread by the additional World Cup crowds.

00:15:43

Dr. Gregory

I mean we see the CDC's role is really in supporting local and state public health so we are we are engaging actively with our CDC measles response in addition to the Ebola response, but whatever they would, would need we are here to support.

00:16:01

Dr.Pillai

And we can definitely take that question back to our measles response colleagues; having just rolled off of that response as well, I can say that we are engaged, they are engaged with Cria's team as well.

00:16:19

Mr. Haynes

Next question please.

00:16:21

Operator

Our next question comes from Jacqueline Howard from CNN; your line is open.

00:16:27

Jacqueline Howard, CNN

Yeah thank you; the question I had was actually about coordinating between Ebola and World Cup, so you answered most of it, but just to circle back on how you mentioned you are holding calls with the 11 host cities here in the U.S .for the World Cup. Can you share more about are there any specific concerns that you're hearing from any of the host cities; can you share more about these calls and are there any cities in particular where risk assessments are slightly higher than others, just any other details there with the host cities; thank you.

00:17:08

Dr. Gregory

Yeah sure so we're holding these calls twice a week. They include both local and state public health, typically representatives from epidemiology lab, and preparedness, and really just kind of run through any issues that they are having. They've been really helpful for situational awareness, and I am very happy to report that very few are reporting really significant issues: typical things that they're used to seeing with Super Bowls, big concerts, or other fan festivals primarily: nothing out of the ordinary. One of the biggest things is sort of heat or weather related and really just working to manage those things.

00:17:49

Mr. Haynes

Thank you Dr. Gregory and Dr. Pillai; this will conclude our briefing. We will have a transcript and audio recording on the CDC media site later today. Thank you.