Ebola Reaches Its Widest Spread Ever: Congo, Kenya, And Now Nigeria

The map is the news. Nigeria confirmed its first case of Ebola on Wednesday — a woman who had traveled from Uganda — and Kenya’s confirmed count has reached nine since its first case on October 6. The outbreak, which began in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has now produced cases across four countries, the widest geographic expansion of an Ebola outbreak ever recorded.

The virus is the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, declared an outbreak in eastern Congo in mid-May. Unlike the Zaire species behind the 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic, Bundibugyo has no approved vaccine and no specific treatment. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern early on; a U.N. News account in July called it “a fire.”

The scale, by the dated counts: the CDC’s September 10 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report described the outbreak as the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history, behind only West Africa 2014–2016, and the fastest-growing — roughly 5,000 cases in about 100 days. The WHO put the toll at 6,778 confirmed cases and 3,269 deaths as of September 7; an update carried by Europe’s ECDC, using WHO figures through September 16, put it at 7,475 cases and 3,605 deaths, a fatality ratio near 48 percent; a governmental data summary put the count at 8,224 cases and 3,982 deaths as of October 2. Counts differ by source and date, and the Daily prints them with their dates attached rather than blending them.

What changed this week is not the death toll but the geography: a first case in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, in a traveler from Uganda, and a growing cluster in Kenya. The response now runs on several borders at once.

Sources: The New York Times; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (MMWR, September 10, 2026); World Health Organization; European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control; ABC News.