All posts tagged "Ebola"

Secretary of State Marco Rubio got in a heated exchange with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday.

Rubio was testifying for the first time since the United States launched the Iran war and Booker raised questions about the Ebola crisis and the military operation. Booker told Rubio he was concerned the U.S. had rolled back its investment in eradicating diseases in Africa, and expressed doubt that the Iran war was over, despite the Trump administration's claims that it was.

"With the crisis of Ebola, we see the challenges have been brought about as a result of our surveillance, early detection, and the like. I'm concerned about what the administration's strategy is," Booker said. "We are clearly seeing that what goes on on the continent of Africa directly affects our public health as well."...

Trump's plan to send Ebola-exposed Americans to Kenya instead of bringing them home suffered a major blow, according to reporting by The Daily Beast.

A Kenyan court suspended Trump's plans the day they were supposed to begin, The Beast reported. United States officials planned to quarantine Americans at a Kenyan air force base, with the White House describing it as a "state-of-the-art facility," ABC News reported.

The epicenter of the current outbreak, which has led to more than 1,000 suspected cases and nearly 250 deaths, is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although no Americans have been reported infected on U.S soil, a doctor was treated for the virus in Germany, and six Americans have reportedly been exposed, The New York Post reported. ...

The Trump administration wants to send U.S. citizens living abroad who are exposed to the deadly Ebola virus to Kenya rather than bring them home, according to new reporting by the New York Times.

Three people familiar with the Trump administration's plans spoke with the NYT, which noted that previous administrations brought Americans home for observation and treatment.

The outbreak of Ebola is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The World Health Organization declared it a public health emergency. More than 1,000 cases of Ebola and 200 deaths have been reported during the past 11 days, which makes it the third largest outbreak on record, according to the NYT. ...

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros ⁠Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Monday that the swiftly spreading Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda “will get worse before it gets better,” as a deadly delay in detecting infections has responders to the epidemic “playing catch-up.”

“The outbreak is spreading rapidly,” Tedros said during a virtual ministerial meeting on the matter. “So far, 101 cases have been confirmed in DRC, with 10 confirmed deaths. But we know the epidemic in DRC is much larger. There are now more than 900 suspected cases and 220 suspected deaths.”

“Countries bordering DRC are at especially high risk and should take immediate action,” he asserted. “In Uganda, there are five confirmed cases and one death.”...

A humanitarian group says that funding cuts by the Trump administration left a region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo "dangerously exposed" to a rare strain of Ebola that has killed more than a hundred people, according to a new report.

The International Rescue Committee told Politico that losing funding under the Trump administration in March 2025 forced it to reduce early-warning systems to detect Ebola in the region.

"Funding cuts have left the region dangerously exposed," Heather Reoch Kerr, the IRC's Congo country director, told Politico. "The sharp rise in reported cases over the last few days reflects the reality that surveillance systems are now catching up with transmission that has likely been occurring for some time."...

The World Health Organization's declaration Sunday that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern triggered a wave of panicked — and in some cases conspiratorial — reactions across the political spectrum.

Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer led the charge with a sprawling post on X that tied the outbreak to a recent scandal involving NIH virologist Vincent Munster, who was reportedly stopped at a U.S. airport with undeclared pathogen samples from the DRC.

"Were any smuggled samples related to this Bundibugyo strain?" Loomer demanded, calling for the firing of "Fauci holdovers," a ban on "foreign born nationals from working in American labs," and the shutdown of Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana. "The American people are sick of bio-terrorism cover-ups," she wrote, tagging President Donald Trump and senior White House staff....