Frontline workers in Bunia, the city at the center of Congo's Ebola epidemic, began receiving the Ervebo vaccine on Sept. 19 in a study built to answer the outbreak's most pressing medical question: whether a vaccine designed against one Ebola species can protect against another. The virus spreading in eastern Congo is Bundibugyo, a rare relative of the better-known Zaire ebolavirus, and no vaccine or treatment has been approved for it.
Congo reported 7,672 confirmed cases and 3,699 deaths through Sept. 19, with infections recorded in seven provinces, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. That makes it the largest Bundibugyo outbreak on record and Congo's largest Ebola outbreak, second in size only to West Africa's 2014 to 2016 epidemic. The figures count confirmed cases only.
