WHO says Ebola not a "pandemic emergency," and U.S. criticism over response may be down to "misunderstanding"

May 20, 2026 / 7:24 AM EDT

/ CBS/AFP

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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.

A medical worker checks the temperature of a local resident as part of Ebola screening in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, May 19, 2026.