Kampala, Uganda — The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring Uganda is still spreading one month after the outbreak was declared. The total number of confirmed cases surged between Monday and Tuesday to over 800, an increase of about 300 since last week. 

The United Nations’ World Health Organization has warned that the virus is still “increasing” in its “geographic spread” in Congo, and experts say it’s a race against time to stop it from mushrooming into a wider health crisis. 

In the epicenter of Ituri province, Congolese security forces fired warning shots to break up an angry crowd of people trying to take the body of an Ebola victim home. Health workers were trying to remove the body for the community’s safety — even in death, victims are highly contagious.

The WHO has said that “intense community transmission continues” in the Central African region, and new cases and deaths have surged.

WHO Incident Manager Dr. Marie-Roseline Belizaire told CBS News deaths were still being reported by the community in Congo, and “that means we are missing cases,” with the disease still spreading undetected in the population.

“One month after the outbreak has been declared, I’m still feeling concerned,” she said.

Efforts to trace anyone believed to have come into contact with known Ebola cases have also seen slow progress. There’s been some improvement, but Congolese health workers say they’ve only been able to follow up with a little over half of the people who came into contact with confirmed cases. In real numbers, this means about 3,000 possible contacts are still unaccounted for.

Over the border in Uganda, authorities are in proactive protection mode. As soon as CBS News landed in the country, all members of the team had to scan a QR code and declare that nobody had been in contact with bats, attended a funeral or experienced symptoms of Ebola such as fever or vomiting.

But that was at the main airport. Uganda shares a nearly 500-mile border with Congo — about the length of the state of Florida — and despite it officially being closed amid the outbreak, people continue to move freely across it.

“Our problem is how is it being managed across the border with the Congo,” Uganda’s National Director of Public Health, Dr. Daniel Kyabayinze, told CBS News. “We know all our cases have been imported from there.”

As of June 10, the WHO said at least 19 Ebola cases had been confirmed in Uganda, including two deaths.

Kyabayinze said the movement of people across the border was likely “very minimal” under the restrictions, but he couldn’t rule it out. 

“We are the same people. The culture and language in Uganda and the people across the Congo are the same,” he said. “They’re the same families. So, even when you have non-gazetted (unofficial) crossing points, the families still communicate.”

“Putting a tight ribbon, or a no-stop movement on the porous borders is almost impossible, it’s like stopping wind from blowing,” Kyabayinze said.

He and other top epidemiologists told CBS News this week that they’re generally happy with the preventative measures implemented by Uganda, and no new cases have been reported in the country in 11 days. But they said they continue to monitor the outbreak in Congo — and the two countries’ long shared border — very closely.

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The U.S. doctor who contracted Ebola while working on a humanitarian mission in Congo has been released from a hospital in Germany after recovering from the potentially deadly disease.

Dr. Peter Stafford was working with the missionary group Serge in the Congo when he was infected with the virus, the group said. He was evacuated to a hospital in Berlin to receive care on May 20, according to the group. His wife, also a doctor volunteering with Serge, and their four children were also evacuated and quarantined.

Peter Stafford was treated at Charité hospital in Berlin, one of the top hospitals in Europe, where he received “antiviral therapy and additional supportive medical measures during the first week,” the hospital said in a statement Saturday. His condition consistently improved over the course of his treatment, the hospital said. 

“The initially high viral load decreased substantially under antiviral treatment and supportive care,” Charité said Saturday. “Since May 30, no virus has been detected in the daily follow-up tests. In accordance with internationally accepted criteria-complete absence of symptoms for more than 72 hours and negative virus detection in repeated PCR tests-the competent public health authority lifted the isolation order today at 12:00 PM.”

While quarantined, neither Stafford’s wife, Rebekah, nor their four children ever developed symptoms of Ebola, according to Charité. He was reunited with his five family members on Saturday.

“We are very pleased with the successful course of treatment and consider this a significant therapeutic success,” Leif Erik Sander, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases and Critical Care Medicine at Charité, said in a statement. “On behalf of the entire team, we thank all participating specialties and departments that made the successful treatment in the specialized isolation unit possible.”

The Bundibugyo ebolavirus outbreak in Congo, which has spread to neighboring Uganda, is causing serious concern among health officials and is likely larger than what has officially been reported, they have warned. The Bundibugyo strain is significantly less common than the Zaire strain of the virus and has no vaccines or treatment.

There have been 452 confirmed cases and 82 confirmed deaths in the Congo as of Thursday, and 19 confirmed cases and two confirmed deaths in Uganda as of Friday, according to the countries’ respective health ministries.

Stafford was exposed to the virus during a surgery at Nyankunde Hospital in Bunia, a city in eastern Congo, Serge previously said. He has worked at the hospital since 2023, according to the group.

“I received first-class care, including experimental therapies currently being trialed for this type of virus,” Stafford said in a statement provided by Charité. “Words cannot adequately express my gratitude. Thank you to everyone who made this possible. Our thoughts remain with the people in the Congo who do not have access to such care.”

A third doctor working with Serge, Dr. Patrick LaRochelle, was also potentially exposed while working in a Congo hospital. The American was asymptomatic and in quarantine at Bulovka Hospital in Prague, according to Serge’s last update on May 24.

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The United Nations’ World Health Organization significantly scaled back on Tuesday the number of suspected Ebola cases in central Africa, lowering it to 116 from more than 900, with 330 total cases confirmed.

The WHO said that as of May 31, there were 116 suspected cases of the deadly virus registered in Democratic Republic of Congo — a massive reduction from the 906 that had been on the books late last week. 

In total, there were 321 cases confirmed in the DRC, including 48 people who had died, while neighboring Uganda had nine confirmed cases, including one death.

While some suspected cases have been confirmed, many more “have been cleared out” after being shown to be other diseases or an unlinked fever, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters Tuesday at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.

While the less daunting caseload may help, doctors working on the front lines of the outbreak say they likely should have learned about it much earlier, and they stress that there are still many challenges to reigning it in.

The International Rescue Committee charity told CBS News the current outbreak may have been spreading, undetected, as early as January.

Dr. Abdou Sebushishe, a medic working with the International Medical Corps in the DRC’s eastern city of Goma, told CBS News that workers trying to track down and speak with people who had come into contact with Ebola patients were only managing to reach about a quarter of those contacts. He said when contacted, some people said they believed Ebola didn’t even exist.

“Instead of coming to healthcare services, they take alternative solutions with traditional healers or other alternatives, and contribute further to spread the outbreak,” he told CBS News. “My message is that Ebola is real.” 

He believes it could be “beyond six months before this outbreak could be put under control.”

“I think the outbreak is outpacing the current response, and there are adjustments being made to catch up,” he said, noting that medics like him still need more resources, including basics like protective gear, to “scale up the protection of healthcare workers.” 

Sebushishe added that 20% of all new positive cases were healthcare workers.

But there’s rising hope this week that the Ebola strain behind the deadly outbreak can be beaten, even by people who catch the virus. Five front-line nurses who contracted the disease while treating patients have recovered and been declared Ebola-free.

“I called the team and told them, ‘Something’s wrong here,'” nurse Etienne Ezo said. “I decided to rest for a bit, and a few minutes later I started vomiting.”

But she was among the medics handed Ebola survivor certificates this week by visiting WHO chief Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus.

“Coming out of this illness alive is an indescribable joy,” said Baraka Bulambulu, another recovered health worker.

Tedros said testing, treatment capacity and trust in health workers all still needed to improve, but he stressed that, “if you come early, and if you get the medical care support, as others have survived you can survive as well.”

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A Kenyan High Court judge on Friday temporarily blocked a Trump administration attempt to set up an Ebola quarantine facility on an air base in the East African country. White House officials said earlier this week that a 50-bed facility would be operational from Friday for American citizens exposed to or infected by the virus.

The non-profit Katiba Institute, whose mission is to defend Kenya’s constitution, filed the restraining application Thursday, citing a lack of transparency and public participation and arguing that “constitutional recklessness” had implications for “grave public health.” 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified six known strains of Ebola, four of which cause significant illness in humans. The most lethal Zaire strain has a mortality rate of up to 90%, according to the World Health Organization, while the Bundibugyo strain — behind an ongoing outbreak centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo — has a mortality rate between 30-50%. 

Trump administration officials said the facility on the Laikipia Air Base, about 124 miles from Kenya’s capital Nairobi, was being designed to provide access to high-quality care for Americans who need to quickly get out of Congo and quarantine without the risks of a lengthy trip back to the U.S.

Another administration official said the government was planning for a facility that would serve “asymptomatic individuals” who may have been exposed to Ebola, in cooperation with the Kenyan government.

As of Thursday, the U.S. was not aware of any exposed Americans who were to be transported to the center, senior administration officials told CBS News.

The Kenyan court said Friday that “a conservatory order is hereby issued restraining the respondents from establishing … any Ebola exposure, quarantine, isolation or treatment facility in Kenya.”

Another organization, the Law Society of Kenya, has also filed a constitutional petition against the proposed Ebola quarantine center, but there was no immediate ruling on that Friday.

“Kenya appears to have been selected as an alternative containment site, thereby externalizing infectious disease risk management to the Republic’s territory,” Katiba said in its legal challenge.  

The Kenyan government has 48 hours to respond to the petition.

Kenya’s health ministry has said it’s open to working with other governments, including the United States, but has not spoken in any detail about the proposed U.S. quarantine facility.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Kenyan President William Ruto by phone, and a State Department spokesperson later said Washington would provide $13.5 million toward the African country’s Ebola defense operations.

The current Ebola outbreak, focused in Congo’s conflict-plagued Ituri Province on the border with Uganda and South Sudan, is believed to have killed at least 220 people and infected more than 900 others. 

Uganda has confirmed seven Ebola cases, but with a lag time in confirming infections due to the virus’ long gestation period and slow public health reporting in the region, health experts fear there could be a surge in cases confirmed in the weeks ahead.

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The head of the World Health Organization said Friday that the Ebola outbreak centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo is “spreading rapidly” and now poses a “very high” risk at the national level.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the United Nations health agency had raised its alert over the risks of the outbreak spreading within Congo, but that it remained lower outside the county. 

“The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is spreading rapidly,” Ghebreyesus said. “We are now revising our risk assessment to very high at the national level.”

The risk of spread remains high within the region, and low at global levels, he told reporters.

The WHO chief said 82 cases had been confirmed in Congo, with seven confirmed deaths, “but we know the epidemic in DRC is much larger,” with almost 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths from the virus. 

The situation in neighboring Uganda is “stable,” he said, with two cases confirmed in people who had visited Congo, and one death.

On Thursday, people set fire to an Ebola treatment center in a town at the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo after being stopped from retrieving the body of a local man, a witness and a senior police officer told The Associated Press, as fear and anger grow over a health crisis that doctors are struggling to contain.

The arson attack in Rwampara reflected the challenges health workers face as they try to curb the rare Ebola virus behind the current outbreak with stringent measures that can clash with local customs, including burial rites. The disease has been spreading for weeks in a region lacking in adequate health facilities, and where many people are on the move to escape armed conflicts.

The bodies of those who die from Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread if people prepare them for burial and gather for funerals. The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities, which can be met by protests from victims’ families and friends.

The center in Rwampara was burned by local youths who became angry while trying to retrieve the body of a friend who had apparently died of Ebola, according to a witness who spoke to the AP by telephone.

“The police intervened to try to calm the situation, but unfortunately they were unsuccessful,” said Alexis Burata, a local student who said he was in the area. “The young people ended up setting fire to the center. That’s the situation.”

The Reuters news agency captured images of the treatment center burning.

An AP journalist saw people break into the center and set fire to objects inside and also to what appeared to be the body of at least one suspected Ebola victim that was being stored there. Aid workers fled the treatment center in vehicles.

Deputy Senior Commissioner Jean Claude Mukendi, head of the public security department in Ituri Province, said the youths had not understood the protocols for burying a suspected Ebola victim.

“His family, friends, and other young people wanted to take his body home for a funeral even though the instructions from the authorities during this Ebola virus outbreak are clear,” Mukendi said. “All bodies must be buried according to the regulations.”

Hama Amadou, field coordinator for the humanitarian organization ALIMA, which had teams working at the center, said later that calm had been restored and that aid teams were continuing their work at the center.

The flash of anger underlined the complications faced by both Congolese authorities and an array of aid agencies trying to stem an outbreak that the WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern early this week.

“We are still in the phase where we are intensifying the investigation, searching for cases,” said Jean Kaseya, Director-General of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I expect the number of cases to increase as surveillance becomes more and more rigorous.”

 Early detection of the virus is key in saving lives, but the region’s already weak health infrastructure and surveillance capacity has been further weakened by international aid cuts, experts say. There are over 920,000 internally displaced people in Ituri Province, according to the U.N.

Armed conflict in the region further complicates efforts to handle the crisis. Local leaders said an attack by ISIS-linked militants killed at least 17 people on Tuesday in Alima, a village in Ituri.

Up to nine-month wait for vaccine   

Health workers and aid groups have said they are in dire need of more supplies and staff to respond. Also, there is no available vaccine or medicine for the Bundibugyo strain responsible for the outbreak.

An expert said this week it would be at least six to nine months before one would be available.

“The priority now is to act quickly and work closely with communities, as the coming days are critical,” said Ariel Kestens, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies delegation in Congo.

Ebola is highly contagious and spreads in people through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood, feces or semen. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding.

The virus spread undetected for weeks following the first known death in late April as Congolese health authorities tested for a different Ebola virus more commonly responsible for outbreaks in the country. Health officials have not yet found “patient zero,” according to the WHO.

The scale of the outbreak so far suggests it “started probably a couple of months ago,” said Anaïs Legand, a viral hemorrhagic fevers expert at the WHO.

The U.S. government has placed restrictions on any travelers who have visited Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days, barring foreign visitors among them from entering the U.S. and requiring U.S. citizens and permanent residents to be diverted to Washington Dulles International Airport for screening.

India and the ⁠African Union said Thursday that the ⁠India-Africa ⁠Forum Summit, scheduled to be held next week in ‌New Delhi, had been postponed due to ⁠the “evolving health situation in parts of Africa.”

On Wednesday, Congo’s soccer team canceled a three-day World Cup preparation training camp and a planned farewell to fans in the capital Kinshasa because of the Ebola outbreak.

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Geneva — The World Health Organization on Wednesday said the risk of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s deadly Ebola outbreak was currently high at the national and regional levels but low worldwide.

WHO experts said that while investigations into its origins were ongoing, given the scale of the situation in the eastern DRC, the outbreak probably began a couple of months ago.

But the UN health agency’s emergency committee said it did not currently meet the pandemic emergency threshold.

“WHO assesses the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels, and low at the global level,” said the organization’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

So far, 51 cases have been confirmed in the DRC, in the eastern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, “although we know the scale of the epidemic in DRC is much larger,” he told a press conference at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva.

He said Uganda had also reported two confirmed cases in the capital Kampala, including one death, while a U.S. national working in the DRC has been confirmed positive and transferred to Germany. American doctor Peter Stafford, whose family lived with him in the DRC, was evacuated to Germany and was receiving treatment, the missionary group Serge said Tuesday.   

“There are several factors that warrant serious concern about the potential for further spread and further deaths,” said Tedros.

“Beyond the confirmed cases, there are almost 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths,” he said. “We expect those numbers to keep increasing, given the amount of time the virus was circulating before the outbreak was detected.”

Ebola outbreak not “a pandemic emergency”

On Sunday, Tedros declared the situation a public health emergency of international concern — the second-highest level of alarm under the legally binding International Health Regulations (IHR) — triggering emergency responses in countries worldwide.

The WHO emergency committee convened to assess the outbreak met on Tuesday.

“The current situation and criteria for a public health emergency of international concern have been met, and we agree that the current situation does not satisfy the criteria for a pandemic emergency,” the committee’s chair, Lucille Blumberg, told reporters from South Africa.

Anais Legand, WHO technical officer on viral hemorrhagic fevers, said investigations were under way to pinpoint how long Ebola has been spreading in the eastern DRC.

“Given the scale, we are thinking that it has started probably a couple of months ago, but investigations are ongoing and our priority is really to cut the transmission chain by implementing contact tracing, isolating and caring for all suspect and confirmed cases,” she said.

WHO responds to U.S. criticism

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday said the WHO was “a little late” in identifying a deadly outbreak.

President Trump, in one of his first acts on returning to office last year, set in motion a U.S. withdrawal from the WHO, which he attacked bitterly over its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous public health officials and experts warned at the time that, as one of the world’s largest funders of global health through both international and national agencies, including the WHO, America’s step back from such programs could impact efforts to provide lifesaving healthcare and combat deadly outbreaks, especially in lower-income countries.

Asked about Rubio’s criticism, Tedros said that “maybe what the secretary said … could be from lack of understanding of how IHR work, and the responsibilities of WHO and other entities,” he said, explaining that the agency acted in support of countries rather than replacing them in outbreak responses.

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The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern, after officials identified more than 250 suspected cases and 80 suspected deaths linked to the disease. 

Officials warned that the true scope of the outbreak could potentially be much larger than what has been reported so far, as health workers raced to intensify screening and contact tracing to contain the disease. 

The WHO said the outbreak fell short of the criteria for a “pandemic emergency,” like COVID-19, and advised against closing international borders. 

Its emergency declaration said eight laboratory-confirmed cases, 246 suspected cases and 80 suspected deaths had been reported as of Saturday in Congo’s eastern province of Ituri, the outbreak’s epicenter. Two more laboratory-confirmed cases, including one death, were also reported in Kampala, Uganda within a day of each other. Those two cases were confirmed in people who had traveled from Congo and had “no apparent link to each other,” according to the WHO.

The Africa CDC has reported 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths in Congo, although regional health officials said at a news conference Saturday that they have identified upwards of 300 probable cases overall.

Officials first announced the outbreak on Friday. Locals in Ituri’s capital, Bunia, said they were afraid for their lives amid frequent burials. 

“Every day, people are dying … and this has been going on for about a week. In a single day, we bury two, three or even more people,” said Jean Marc Asimwe, a resident of Bunia. 

Congolese Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said late Friday there have been eight laboratory-confirmed cases, and among them four deaths.

Test results confirmed it is the Bundibugyo virus, a variant of the disease that has been less prominent in Congo’s past outbreaks. This is Congo’s 17th outbreak since Ebola first emerged in the country in 1976.

Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal. 

The Bundibugyo virus has only been responsible for two previous Ebola outbreaks, according to CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Céline Gounder. One, in Uganda in 2007, resulted in 55 cases. The other, in the Congo in 2012, resulted in 57 cases. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for this strain of Ebola, Gounder said, noting “medical professionals seem very concerned about the possibility or the ability to contain this.” 

The suspected index case in the latest outbreak is a nurse who died at a hospital in Bunia, Kamba said. He said the case dates back to April 24.

He did not say whether samples from the nurse were tested, but said the person presented symptoms suggestive of Ebola.

Outbreak spreads to neighboring Uganda 

Uganda confirmed Friday an Ebola case that authorities said was “imported” from Congo. The person died at the Kibuli Muslim Hospital in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, on May 14.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had said it is concerned about the risk of further spread due to the proximity of affected areas to Uganda and South Sudan.

Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said it was preparing a “large-scale response” and called the rapid spread of the outbreak “extremely concerning,” according to the Agence France-Presse.

The body of the patient who died in Kampala was later taken back to Congo and no other local case has been confirmed, Uganda’s health ministry said.

On Saturday, people were being screened at the entrance of the Kibuli Muslim Hospital.

Ismail Kigongo, who resides in Kampala, said the new outbreak reminded him of his father, whom he lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I really get scared because I remember burying my father without looking at his body,” he said.

Kenya, Uganda’s neighbor, said Saturday there is only a “moderate risk of importation” of the Ebola virus due to regional travel. Kenya’s government said it has formed an Ebola preparedness team and has strengthened surveillance at all points of entry.

Logistical challenges complicate outbreak management 

Congo often faces logistical challenges in delivering expertise and supplies to affected regions during disease outbreaks. 

As Africa’s second-largest country by land area, Congo’s provinces are far from one another and mostly battling conflict. Ituri, for instance, is around 620 miles from the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, and is ravaged by violence from Islamic State-backed militants.

“What we know very well [is] that the country has experience, but the region where it is happening is highly volatile with the humanitarian situation going on and the population moving around from South Sudan to Uganda and other parts,” said Dr. Abdi Rahman Mahamud, WHO director of health emergency alert and response operations, during a news conference Friday.

The disease has so far been confirmed in three health zones in Ituri province, including the capital city, Bunia, and the areas of Rwampara and Mongwalu, where the outbreak is concentrated.

Only 13 blood samples have been tested at the National Institute of Biomedical Research; eight tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain. The remaining five could not be analyzed due to insufficient sample volume, the health minister said.

In Bunia, Ituri’s main city, businesses and regular activities in public places appeared normal on Friday.

Resident Adeline Awekonimungu said she hopes the outbreak is quickly contained. “My recommendation is that the government take this matter seriously and that it takes charge of the hospitals so that this matter can be brought under control,” she said.

Ebola risk to Americans is low, CDC says

U.S. health officials describe the risk to Americans as low, but did not directly answer questions about whether any Americans may have been exposed to the Ebola virus in Africa.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with other health officials “to ensure the outbreak is managed and prevent further spread of Ebola,” said Dr. Satish Pillai, the manager of the CDC’s response to the outbreak, in a call with reporters Sunday.

The agency has an office with 30 personnel in Congo, and is working to deploy additional CDC workers to respond to the outbreak, Pillai said.

The agency on Friday issued travel advisories urging Americans traveling in Congo and Uganda to avoid people who have symptoms like fever, muscle pain and rash. The CDC also is “putting in appropriate measures for identifying individuals with any symptoms” at ports of entry, Pillai said, but CDC officials did not immediately respond to follow-up questions asking for more detail.

Doctor who survived Ebola questions U.S. response 

The U.S. has been the single largest external player in Ebola outbreak response in the past, but experts worry the Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and its withdrawal of the country from the WHO may impact such efforts.

A New York doctor who contracted and survived Ebola more than 10 years ago told CBS News on Friday that he is “really concerned” for healthcare workers treating Ebola patients. Medical staff have “very close contact with people when they’re most contagious,” said Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency room physician and public health professor at Brown University. 

Spencer said the U.S. does not have the capacity right now to respond quickly to global outbreaks. He suggested to CBS News there may be a connection between the shutdown of USAID and the fact that the latest outbreak was not announced until Friday. 

“Before the second Trump administration, USAID would have been on the ground,” Spencer said. “The CDC would have been on the ground at a moment’s notice, maybe even before a moment’s notice, of a new outbreak of Ebola because we were in a bunch of countries. We created relationships beforehand.”

Spencer also pointed to absences in the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response and other health agencies. However, he said the U.S. is still capable of dealing with the outbreak. 

Ebola “is not that great at spreading,” he said, and highlighted the United States’ response to a deadly outbreak of a rare strain of hantavirus aboard a Dutch cruise ship. 

“We’ve seen over the past couple weeks with the national quarantine unit we have in Nebraska and the over-a-dozen centers that we have around the U.S. that are capable of taking care of very high consequence pathogens like hantavirus and Ebola,” Spencer said. “These were all commitments that we made as a country, particularly and partly because of cases like my own a decade ago.”

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Doctors are monitoring an Ebola epidemic in Africa that may be to blame for dozens of deaths so far. Lilia Luciano reports and spoke with a U.S. doctor who recovered from the virus.

A New York doctor who contracted and survived Ebola more than a decade ago says he is worried for healthcare workers who are at the center of treating the latest outbreak in a remote province of eastern Congo. 

“Healthcare workers are the group that I’m really concerned about because they had very close contact with people when they’re most contagious, particularly around the time of folks’ death,” Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency room physician and public health professor at Brown University, told CBS News on Friday.

Authorities in eastern Congo’s Ituri province are contending with a new Ebola outbreak that is suspected in at least 246 cases, including 65 deaths, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday.

This is the 17th Ebola outbreak in the Congo since 1976. One of the worst outbreaks killed more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016. 

“What we know very well that the country has experience, but the region where it is happening is highly volatile with the humanitarian situation going on and the population moving around from South Sudan to Uganda and other parts,” Dr. Abdi Rahman Mahamud, World Health Organization director of health emergency alert and response operations, said during a news conference Friday.

Spencer contracted Ebola while working with the nonprofit group Doctors Without Borders in Guinea in September 2014. He was in Guinea for three weeks working with Ebola patients.

When he returned to New York City the following month, arriving home on Oct. 17, 2014, he said he began to self-monitor, taking his temperature twice a day.

Then on Oct. 23, 2014, just under a week after returning home, he developed a fever and was rushed by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital, a designated Ebola treatment center at the time.

Health officials tested and decontaminated his apartment, and his fiancée at the time and two friends were quarantined.

“The one that I was infected with, the Zaire strain, seems to have the highest mortality, but they all produce pretty similar symptoms of fatigue [that] ultimately leads to vomiting, diarrhea, incredible weakness and weight loss,” Spencer said.  

He was hospitalized at Bellevue for 19 days and made a full recovery. He was treated with a combination of antiviral and experimental treatments, as well as blood transfusions from an Ebola survivor.

“Let me tell you, 19 days in a room by yourself, other than a small window, a tiny screen… and providers who came in a few times a day dressed in space suits. That’s your only human interaction,” Spencer said. “I’m lucky though, because I’m alive, and the majority of people that were infected with Ebola are not, particularly the people that I was taking care of in West Africa and Guinea at that time.”

According to CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Céline Gounder, the latest outbreak is believed to be a strain known as the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, or BDV. Gounder says that strain has only been responsible for two known outbreaks prior to this, a 2007 outbreak in Uganda with 55 cases and an outbreak in the Congo in 2012 with 57 cases.

She said there are no approved vaccines or treatments for BDV.

“Medical professionals seem very concerned about the possibility or the ability to contain this,” Gounder said. “It’s already a big outbreak at the point that we’re hearing about it. There have already been a number of deaths. And this is a strain of Ebola for which we have no treatment, no vaccines.”

The Africa CDC reported that of only 20 samples tested so far, 13 have been confirmed positive. 

The U.S. has been the single largest external player in Ebola outbreak response in the past, but now experts worry about the impact of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and its withdrawal of the U.S. from the World Health Organization.

Spencer said he believes it’s possible there’s a connection between the shutdown of USAID and the fact that the latest outbreak was not officially announced until Friday. He said it’s also concerning that the White House does not have a director for its Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Gerald Parker, who Trump tapped to run the office in February 2025, resigned later that year, and the position has remain unfilled. 

“Right now, we don’t have that capacity,” he said of responding quickly to global outbreaks. “We don’t have a director or anyone in the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. We don’t have anyone coordinating across the State Department and the CDC, and our relations with foreign actors and the WHO. We’ve gotten rid of a lot of those lessons we learned the hard way over the past decade, and over the past five years.”

Prior to the latest moves by the Trump administration, Spencer said, the U.S. would have likely had USAID and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials on the ground in the Congo before the outbreak.

“Before the second Trump administration, USAID would have been on the ground,” Spencer said. “The CDC would have been on the ground at a moment’s notice, maybe even before a moment’s notice of a new outbreak of Ebola because we were in a bunch of countries. We created relationships beforehand.”

Despite those issues, though, Spencer said he believes the U.S. is still capable of dealing with a virus like Ebola, which he says “is not that great at spreading” despite its high mortality rate. He noted the U.S. response this month to the deadly hantavirus outbreak on a Dutch cruise ship. Eighteen Americans who were aboard the ship are currently being monitored in a quarantine unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.  

“We’ve seen over the past couple weeks with the national quarantine unit we have in Nebraska and the over a dozen centers that we have around the U.S. that are capable of taking care of very high consequence pathogens like hantavirus and Ebola,” Spencer said. “These were all commitments that we made as a country, particularly and partly because of cases like my own a decade ago.”

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