An American missionary doctor working at Nyankunde Hospital in the eastern Congolese city of Bunia has tested positive for Ebola and is being flown to Germany for treatment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his employer said Monday, as Congo's health minister put the outbreak's death toll at 131 and the United States barred entry to noncitizens who have been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the past three weeks.

The American case, the entry ban and the jump in fatalities mark the first time the Bundibugyo strain outbreak declared by the Africa CDC on May 15 has reached into U.S. clinical care and U.S. border policy. The World Health Organization, which declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday, had logged 88 deaths at that point. Three days later the count stands at 132 across two countries.

The American case

The missionary group Serge identified the infected physician as Dr. Peter Stafford, who has served at Nyankunde Hospital since 2023 and was exposed while treating patients there. His wife, also a Serge physician, and a third doctor remain asymptomatic. "All three medical professionals have strictly adhered to established quarantine protocols since the potential exposure," Serge said in a statement on its website.

The CDC said six other Americans, in addition to Stafford, are expected to be moved out of the region for monitoring or treatment.

The U.S. response

The U.S. announcement of the entry ban, reported Monday on PBS NewsHour, covers noncitizens who have been in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan in the last three weeks. Dr. Craig Spencer of Brown University, who contracted Ebola while treating patients in West Africa in 2014, told the program that U.S. response capacity has eroded since Washington cut support to USAID and other nongovernmental partners last year. The outbreak is concentrated in a region with limited health infrastructure, active armed conflict and mobile populations, with cases already reported in Goma and in Kampala, hundreds of kilometers apart.

The strain

The Bundibugyo variant, first identified in Uganda in 2007, has no approved vaccine and no approved treatment, unlike the more common Zaire strain. This is only the third known Bundibugyo outbreak and already the largest.

Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba, speaking through an interpreter on PBS NewsHour, urged residents with symptoms to come forward: "Make yourself known so that you can be taken care of and so that we can prevent the disease from spreading."

Counterpoint

Conservative commentators and Republican lawmakers had not publicly responded to the new travel restrictions by press time. Spencer cautioned that the case count is almost certainly an undercount and that genomic analysis will likely show the virus has been spreading longer than the late-April index case suggests.

The CDC said it expects to move six additional Americans out of the affected region in the coming days for monitoring or treatment.