Risk of Ebola spread is high regionally but low globally, WHO says

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — The World Health Organization said on Wednesday the risk of spread of the Ebola virus in Congo and Uganda is high at national and regional levels, but low at the global level.

The risk assessment came as the leader of the WHO team in Congo said the outbreak, which has led to over 130 suspected deaths, could last at least another two months as aid efforts intensified to stem the spread.

WHO has declared the Ebola outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, requiring a coordinated response. On Tuesday, it expressed concern over the “scale and speed” of the outbreak.

Worried residents in eastern Congo have reported rising prices for face masks and disinfectants following the outbreak of the rare type of Ebola, known as the Bundibugyo virus. It spread undetected for weeks following the first known death, while authorities tested for another, more common Ebola virus, which came up negative, health experts and aid workers said. There are no approved medicines or vaccines for the Bundibugyo virus.

So far, 51 cases have been confirmed in Congo's northern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, as well as two in Uganda, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday. Beyond that, there are 139 suspected deaths and almost 600 suspected cases, he said.

“We know that the scale of the epidemic is much larger,” he said. “We expect those numbers to keep increasing.”

Congo was expecting shipments from the United States and Britain of an experimental vaccine for different types of Ebola, developed by researchers at Oxford, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a virologist at the National Institute of Biomedical Research, told reporters on Tuesday.

“We will administer the vaccine and see who develops the disease,” he said.

In Bunia, the site of the first known death, schools and churches remained open on Wednesday, and some residents were wearing masks in the street. Residents said that masks have become harder to find and that some disinfectants previously sold for 2,500 Congolese francs (about $1) now cost up to 10,000 francs ($4.4).

“It’s truly sad and painful because we’ve already been through a security crisis, and now Ebola is here too,” said Justin Ndasi, a resident of Bunia. “We have to protect ourselves to avoid this epidemic.”

Trish Newport, emergency program manager at aid group Doctors Without Borders, posted on social media that her team in Bunia identified suspected cases over the weekend at the Salama hospital, which has no isolation ward. They unsuccessfully tried to place them at another health facility in Bunia.

“The team called around to other health facilities to see if they had isolations,” she said. “Every health facility they called said, ‘We’re full of suspect cases. We don’t have any space.’ This gives you a vision of how crazy it is right now.”

In Mongbwalu, the town at the epicenter of the current outbreak, the border with Uganda remains open, and gold mining activities continue, Chérubin Kuku Ndilawa, a local civil society leader, told The Associated Press.

“There’s no panic. People continue with their normal lives, but they’re also starting to spread the word,” said Ndilawa, adding that controlling the outbreak has been hindered by a lack of public handwashing stations.

Dr. Didier Pay, a former director of the Mongbwalu General Hospital, said his clinic was treating around 30 Ebola patients and that a student from the local medical technology institute died on Wednesday morning.

"The deployment is already underway for the construction of a treatment center,” he told the AP.

Health experts said the delayed detection of the virus and large population movements in affected areas, which already suffer a preexisting humanitarian crisis, complicated the response. Parts of eastern Congo are controlled by armed rebels, hampering the delivery of aid.

Congo said the first person died from the virus on April 24 in Bunia, but the confirmation did not come for weeks. The body was repatriated to the Mongbwalu health zone, a mining area with a large population.

“That caused the Ebola outbreak to escalate,” said Congo’s Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba.

Dr. Anne Ancia, the head of the WHO team in Congo, said authorities still haven’t identified “patient zero.” There was a long road ahead, she said, adding that cuts in funding had “a marked detrimental effect on humanitarian actors.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Tuesday that the Trump administration would “lean into” Ebola response efforts with a priority on funding 50 emergency clinics in affected areas. The U.S. has so far contributed $13 million to the effort and Rubio said more would be coming.

Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Wilson McMakin in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

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World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaks to the media following an emergency committee during a press conference at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

Aid workers set up an Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne) Corrects from Bunia to Rwampara

A man sprays a tent at an Ebola treatment center in Bunia, Congo, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)

People offload a shipment of more than 15 tons of supplies donated by UNICEF as part of the response to the Ebola virus outbreak at Bunia National Airport in Bunia, Congo, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

People offload a shipment of more than 15 tons of supplies donated by UNICEF as part of the response to the Ebola virus outbreak at Bunia National Airport in Bunia, Congo, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

People offload a shipment of more than 15 tons of supplies donated by UNICEF as part of the response to the Ebola virus outbreak at Bunia National Airport in Bunia, Congo, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

There aren’t many lawmakers like Thomas Massie left in Congress.

The renegade Republican who rose to prominence as an idiosyncratic and stubborn outlier in his party, popular in the Kentucky district that repeatedly sent him to the House, lost his primary bid for reelection Tuesday after a vicious and costly attack by President Donald Trump.

The stunning outcome caps a career like few others and shows the extent of the president’s ability to badger, badmouth and eventually boot out his political adversaries — and that no lawmaker is apparently safe. Massie's defeat comes after the Trump-led ouster of Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana over the weekend and the president's endorsement Tuesday of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his challenge to Sen. John Cornyn, which sent chills through the Senate.

Trump had reserved his fiercest attacks for Massie, a quirky conservative who had become among the most powerful rank-and-file Republicans in the House because of his willingness to vote as he pleased, rather than as the party demanded. And now he's been toppled like so many other Republicans who crossed the president.

Massie was undaunted after losing to Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL handpicked by Trump.

“If the legislative branch always votes with the president, we do have a king,” Massie told cheering supporters Tuesday night. But if lawmakers follow the Constitution, he said, “we have a republic.”

Massie also teased that his political career may not be over quite yet during the closing moments of his concession speech, as a raucous crowd broke into chants of “2028!” and “President!”

“You’ve made a compelling argument,” he replied. “We’ll talk about it later.”

Trump said of Massie’s defeat: “He deserves to lose.”

Massie rose from the House Republican backbench, charting his own path and showing again and again he was willing to buck his party and the president.

He voted against Trump’s big tax cuts bill last year, worried the several trillion-dollar costs would add to the nation’s deficits.

He rejected Trump’s military forays against Iran and Venezuela, opposed to U.S. intervention overseas, and he routinely voted against U.S. foreign aid, including to Israel, drawing millions of dollars against him from pro-Israel interest groups.

And perhaps most remarkably, Massie, in partnership with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, persisted in a long-shot effort to force the Justice Department’s release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

It was his work on the Epstein files, perhaps more than any of his repeated votes against spending bills and other party priorities, that elevated Massie's profile.

Khanna said on X Tuesday that Massie “lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war.”

Trump lashed out at the “lowlife” Massie as the congressman pushed the issue last year, prolonging a political headache for the White House.

First elected in 2012, at the tail end of the GOP tea party wave before Trump’s Make America Great Again movement burst onto the scene, Massie stood out from the start.

An engineer by training, Massie designed several patents — some on display in his office — as well as a debt calculator that blinks in flashing red numerals as the nation’s deficits pile up. He often wears a miniature version of the debt calculator as a lapel pin.

He married his high school sweetheart, Rhonda, and joined her at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They raised their four children living largely off the grid in a solar-power home he designed himself, making him something of a legend among a generation of do-it-yourselfers. He raised cattle, drove an early Tesla and drank raw milk.

Inspired by fellow Kentuckian Rand Paul after having put up lawn signs for the senator’s election, the libertarian-leaning Massie ran for office himself.

Once he won his own House seat, Massie declined to join the newly forming Freedom Caucus, his own far-right views not fully aligning with the conservative coalition.

Trump set his sights on Massie in 2020 during his first presidential term, when the congressman dared to object to a $2.2 trillion aid package to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

At the time, Massie refused to allow the COVID-19 package to be approved without a formal roll call, forcing hundreds of lawmakers back to the Capitol. Trump called him a “third rate Grandstander.”

Trump did not let up his criticisms, even after Massie's wife died in 2024. Massie announced in 2025 that he had remarried, after proposing to Carolyn Grace Moffa, a former Paul staffer, on the steps of the Library of Congress. He said they planned to live on the farm.

The president suggested that Massie got remarried too quickly, writing on social media that “his wife will soon find out that she’s stuck with a LOSER!”

Associated Press reporter Thomas Beaumont contributed from Des Moines, Iowa.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., smiles as he speaks during an election night watch party after losing the Republican party's nomination at the Marriott Cincinnati Airport, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Hebron, Ky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., kisses his wife, Carolyn Moffa, during an election night watch party after losing the Republican party's nomination at the Marriott Cincinnati Airport, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Hebron, Ky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., reacts as he speaks during an election night watch party after losing the Republican party's nomination at the Marriott Cincinnati Airport, Tuesday, May 19, 2026, in Hebron, Ky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)