The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has killed 1,521 people and recorded 3,442 cases, according to government data released on Thursday, marking a 50% increase in deaths in roughly a week. The death rate stands at 44%, and health officials classify it as the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever documented. “In the past two months, 1,000 people have died. That took 8 months for 1,000 people to die in West Africa,” Carl Skau, acting executive director of the UN World Food Programme, said during a briefing. Cases are doubling every twenty days, widening the gap between the epidemic’s spread and the response.

The outbreak, declared on 15 May, is driven by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, against which there are no approved vaccines or treatments. Transmission is concentrated in the remote, conflict-plagued Ituri province, which accounts for almost 90% of cases. Only 78% of known contacts are under surveillance, far below the 95% target needed to interrupt transmission. Attacks on health facilities—including a 15 July assault on a hospital and treatment centre in the Nyakunde health zone—have forced international partners to temporarily withdraw, depleting stocks of supplies and disrupting surveillance and contact tracing.

UN officials are calling for a massive scale‑up of the response, warning that the existing humanitarian plan—requiring $2.1 billion—is only 45% funded. Meanwhile, Uganda discharged its last patient in mid‑June and has declared itself free of Ebola, though the World Health Organization says the country must remain on alert.

Against this backdrop, vaccine development is accelerating. The WHO says a single‑dose candidate based on the rVSV platform is “the most likely to succeed.” Hilleman Laboratories, with headquarters in Singapore, is fast‑tracking that vaccine for clinical trials. Separately, a phase‑I trial of the ChAdOx1 candidate—built on the adenovirus‑vector platform used for the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID‑19 vaccine—has begun in the United Kingdom, enrolling approximately 50 healthy volunteers aged 18–55. The study, supported by up to $8.5 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), will first assess safety and immune response; if results are positive, trials will move to Uganda and later to phase‑II and phase‑III studies in outbreak settings. CEPI has also committed $50 million to a vaccine candidate with Moderna. The immediate milestone to watch is the completion of the ChAdOx1 phase‑I trial.