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As the death toll from the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) surpasses 2,000 people, infectious disease experts say Americans should remain aware of the humanitarian crisis overseas while understanding the reality of domestic risk.
The virus has spread rapidly across parts of eastern and northeastern DRC, with earlier cross-border cases in Uganda. Published government data shows a total of 4,381 confirmed cases.
“There’s a lot of people who live there. So this is not breaking out in a town of 50, but in rural cities of hundreds of thousands,” David Wohl, MD, a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Fox News Digital.
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“Compared to previous outbreaks, the pace at which this is moving is unprecedented,” he went on. “The slope is just so catastrophic, with more and more people getting infected at a very significant pace without much slowing down.”
Controlling transmission has proven particularly difficult in the DRC due to what Wohl calls a “perfect storm” of adverse conditions.
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Dense populations and limited access can complicate efforts to deliver medical care, track contacts and establish quarantine protocols, he noted.
“There’s conflict in and around these areas, which makes getting in and out of them … really tough,” Wohl said.
What the outbreak means for Americans
Despite the escalating death toll in Africa, health officials emphasize that the average American faces very little threat from Ebola.
“This is not something that I think the average person has to worry about acquiring here in the United States,” Wohl said, noting that transmission requires close physical contact with bodily fluids from a severely ill or deceased individual.
“It doesn’t travel across the air and across a room,” he added.
“The average person who gets a headache or a fever does not need to worry about Ebola.”
Even during the massive 2014 West Africa outbreak, which Wohl said infected more than 28,000 people, only four Ebola cases were diagnosed in the U.S. Two were imported cases, and two nurses contracted the virus while caring for an infected patient in Dallas, according to the CDC.
Several other Ebola patients who had been infected and diagnosed overseas were medically evacuated to the U.S. for treatment.
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“We just have so much better public health, healthcare systems, hygiene, access,” Wohl said. “It’s a very different environment.”
Viruses like measles, influenza, RSV and SARS-CoV-2 pose more immediate public health concerns for Americans, he added.
“The average person who gets a headache or a fever does not need to worry about Ebola,” the doctor said.
For the U.S., potential concerns include the risk to healthcare providers traveling to Africa to assist with containment efforts and the possibility of further instability in the region.
The treatment challenge
Medical researchers are also navigating challenges with virus variants, according to Wohl.
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While treatments and vaccines were successfully deployed against the Zaire strain during the 2014 crisis, the doctor said the Bundibugyo virus circulating in parts of the DRC is genetically different.
As a result, approved Ebola therapeutics are not approved for Bundibugyo-related disease, and their effectiveness against it has not been established.
Researchers are actively evaluating new treatments and vaccine candidates for Bundibugyo virus, Wohl said.
Emerging technologies, including mRNA platforms, could potentially help researchers more rapidly develop vaccines against specific viral threats, according to the doctor.
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Global agencies, including the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, continue to monitor the region closely. Wohl emphasized that international support and resource deployment remain critical to stopping the surge.
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“This is a fire that’s raging that continues to be out of control,” Wohl said. “There’s lots of people suffering … and I think more can be done.”
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