Public health · Kenya and East Africa

Nairobi has nine Bundibugyo cases. The Congo outbreak has moved past 10,000.

· updated · Varona AI briefing

This is a rewrite of public bulletins for readers in Kenya. It is not a clinical advisory and it is not a line list. If you are unwell, or you know someone who is, use a health facility or call the Ministry of Health on 719 (WhatsApp 0700 719 719). Counts below are tied to the date of the source. They will have moved by the time you read this.

A single cluster in Nairobi

On 6 October the Ministry of Health confirmed Kenya’s first imported case of Bundibugyo virus disease. The patient was a Kenyan who had been living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fell ill there, travelled by road to Kampala, and landed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Jambojet flight 8523 at 13:10 on 3 October. He was isolated at Nairobi Hospital, tested at the National Virology Reference Laboratory and at KEMRI, and died on 5 October. The Ministry said a safe burial was arranged and that it had started tracing family, health workers, and the people on that flight.

The cluster did not stop with him. Kenya News Agency, quoting Director-General for Health Dr Patrick Amoth on 23 October, reported a second death: a family contact, the country’s third confirmed case, who developed symptoms on 13 October while already in quarantine. By 26 October the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, citing the Ministry, put Kenya at nine confirmed cases and two deaths, all linked to that first patient. The last new case in the cluster was reported on 20 October. Four were relatives. Four were health workers or people caring for the index patient. ECDC said 20 contacts had completed 21 days of follow-up and 98 were still being watched.

That is the fact that matters for Nairobi. The Ministry has said there is no sign of spread outside known contacts. The same 6 October statement said Kenya had already screened 652,584 travellers and was running border laboratories at Busia and Lwakhakha, plus KEMRI labs in Nairobi and Kisumu. Western counties are on passive watch. They are not where the confirmed cases are.

Uganda’s own outbreak was declared over on 28 July, after 20 confirmed cases and two deaths, the last of them on 21 June. The Nairobi patient’s route still ran through Uganda. On 25 October Kampala said 60 contacts tied to that traveller had finished follow-up, and it tightened checks at entry points and movement across the Uganda–Congo border.

The epidemic those journeys came from

Congo declared this outbreak on 15 May 2026 in Ituri. The virus is Bundibugyo, first recognised in Uganda’s Bundibugyo District in 2007, not the Zaire species for which a vaccine is already licensed. WHO’s Disease Outbreak News of 23 October, using data through 20 October, described sustained transmission: 9,704 confirmed cases and 4,687 deaths across 66 health zones in eight provinces. A large share of the deaths were still happening in communities rather than in treatment centres, which is what late detection looks like.

Newer cuts of the same epidemic are higher, and they do not agree with each other to the case. ECDC, using Congo figures through 25 October, reported 10,060 confirmed cases and 4,887 deaths. Ituri accounted for 7,211 of those cases. North Kivu had 2,309. Haut-Uélé had 436. Tshopo had 83. CDC’s situation summary dated 27 October put the Congo total at 10,193 confirmed cases and 4,960 deaths. Wire copy in the same week, including an ABC News account, described the outbreak passing 10,000 and quoted experts who were worried about further spread even where some commentators saw a slowing. WHO had not called a plateau. The 23 October bulletin, and the provincial counts after it, still show large numbers of new cases in Ituri and North Kivu, and the virus had already produced importations in Kenya and Nigeria.

Inside Congo, WHO named Mandima, Beni, and Bunia as the zones with the most cases and deaths in the 21 days to 20 October. Those three names are the ones to watch. Goma was not on that list. The map on our dashboard uses health-zone centroids for that reason, and it says so on each marker.

Washington is funding experimental shots. Kenya has none to give.

There is still no licensed vaccine and no specific treatment for Bundibugyo virus. Ervebo is licensed for the Zaire species, not this one. The study already running is in Bunia. On 23 October the Tumaini trial vaccinated its first participant. It is a phase 2/3 study led in Congo by the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale with the University of Antwerp. CEPI says Ervebo is the first product in that trial. A Moderna candidate and an Oxford candidate, developed with the Serum Institute of India, are being prepared to follow. That is research inside Congo’s response. Kenya’s Ministry of Health has not announced a vaccination campaign.

The Trump administration is putting public money into candidates that have not yet been given to people. On 28 October IAVI, a biomedical group based in New York, said the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority had awarded $36 million, inside a contract that can reach $99 million, for a one-dose Bundibugyo candidate. BARDA sits inside the US Department of Health and Human Services. The candidate uses the same vesicular-stomatitis-virus platform as Ervebo. IAVI says it protected macaques. The award pays for doses for a phase 1 trial, which tests safety, not whether the shot prevents disease. IAVI’s spokesperson, Karie Youngdahl, told Politico that those first doses should be ready early in 2027, and that the group expects phase 1 results in the second quarter of that year. She said the safety trial is planned for the United States or for a country in Africa other than Congo, where IAVI does not have the field capacity to run it. Only after that, she said, might the candidate be tested for efficacy where the outbreak is. IAVI named Hilleman Laboratories, SK bioscience, and IDT Biologika as the partners who will develop and manufacture it.

Politico reported a second award the same week: $37 million from the department to Public Health Vaccines, a Massachusetts company, for a Bundibugyo candidate on that same platform. The newsletter described this outbreak as already the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record, and said specialists expect it to become the largest. The counts in this briefing stay with the ministry, WHO, ECDC, and CDC figures above. The ranking is Politico’s. IAVI’s president, Mark Feinberg, described the BARDA money as support for the epidemic under way and for readiness against a later one. None of it is a product a clinic in Nairobi can offer this month. The same account, citing ECDC, said Ervebo is already being tested for efficacy in Congo and that five other experimental Bundibugyo vaccines are still in early development.

What the US flight rule means if you leave Kenya

From 23:59 Eastern time on 3 November, every person boarding a flight to the United States must sign a statement that they have not been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the previous 21 days. CDC’s order covers passengers and crew, including cargo crews and crews travelling on a deadhead ticket. Airlines have to check the statement before boarding, refuse anyone who will not sign, and keep a copy for at least 42 days. A connection that only lands in Congo counts, even if the passenger never leaves the aircraft. A false statement is a US criminal matter. The order, as published in the Federal Register, runs through 18 December unless it is changed.

Someone whose trip never entered Congo can sign that statement. The rule is not a ban on travel from Kenya. It does catch itineraries that touched Congo, and it sits next to a separate rule for Uganda and South Sudan. CDC says non-US citizens who were in Uganda or South Sudan in the prior 21 days are not being allowed to enter the United States, while US citizens who were in those countries, and not in Congo, are being routed through designated airports for screening. That is the East Africa operational point. Nairobi–US tickets usually connect elsewhere. A recent stop in Congo, or time in Uganda, is now an entry question, not only a health question.

Airlines for America and the International Air Transport Association asked CDC to reconsider. Reuters reported their letters on 28 October. The complaint, in short, is that every US-bound flight has to collect the statement within days, including from crew, when only a small share of US air passengers have any Congo connection. IATA also asked why ships and land crossings were left out. Those letters do not withdraw the order.

The surveillance map that sits behind this briefing was revised the same day, from these sources. Open the live surveillance map

Sources