KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo, the world's fastest-growing outbreak on record, has now spread to seven provinces in the African country, local authorities said. And it's showing no signs of slowing down.
According to the governor of the northwestern province of Sud-Ubangi, Jean-Rene Galekwa Vundawe, laboratory tests by Congo’s national research institute found in a sample the Bundibugyo virus, the rare kind of Ebola that caused the current outbreak.
The statement, which was issued on Thursday and reported by local media outlets on Friday, did not say where the sample was from or disclose other information about the source of the infection.
Sud-Ubangi is the seventh province affected by the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo. As of Wednesday, 6,942 cases and 3,349 deaths have been reported, according to the latest government figures.
The World Health Organization has said the outbreak remains out of control and is on track to surpass the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the deadliest on record, which killed more than 11,000 people, primarily in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In recent weeks, new cases and deaths have declined in Ituri province, the outbreak’s epicenter, but risen sharply in neighboring North Kivu and Haut-Uele.
The outbreak is spreading under extremely difficult conditions, fueled by insecurity, displacement, a health workers’ strike and intense population movements. The situation is particularly concerning at displacement sites, where residents already live in extremely precarious conditions.
Sud-Ubangi, which borders the Central African Republic, does not border any of the six provinces in eastern Congo where confirmed Ebola cases had previously been reported. They include Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, Tshopo and Bas-Uele.
Last month, Congo began vaccinating health and other front-line workers with the Ervebo vaccine that was effective in past Ebola outbreaks caused by a different, more common type called Zaire.
Clinical trials are underway to find a licensed vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus.
The vaccination trials started in the eastern Tshopo, Haut-Uele and Bas-Uele provinces, Placide Mbala Kingebeni, Africa CDC’s director for research, clinical trials and innovation, said Thursday. Vaccinations in Ituri, the epicenter of the outbreak are set to start next week, he added.
Health workers who are members of the safe and dignified burial team prepare to bury Abineno Justine, a 38 year old woman who died of the Ebola virus, in Bunia, Congo, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden is holding an election on Sunday that will determine whether a conservative leader remains in charge and a hard-right party wins ministerial jobs for the first time, or whether the center left returns to power.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is seeking a second four-year term at the helm of the European Union nation that is also NATO’s newest member. His predecessor hopes to win the job back. The question of who will govern has taken up more space than actual policy issues.
More than 8 million people in the nation of about 10.6 million people are eligible to vote in the election for the 349-seat parliament in Stockholm, the Riksdag, which will elect the next prime minister.
Kristersson has led Sweden since 2022 with a three-party center-right coalition. It relies on outside support from the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party that has far-right roots but has moved toward the political mainstream, for a parliamentary majority. If the right is reelected, it can expect Cabinet posts this time.
He's up against Magdalena Andersson of the center-left Social Democrats, a party that more often than not led Swedish governments since World War II. Andersson served as prime minister from 2021 until she lost power at the last election.
Experts say the campaign has been fragmented and incoherent, with policy questions such as how healthcare should be organized drowned out by the question of which parties will be able to put together a government.
“Crime has come down, inflation has come down. So these topics are not really what people discuss,” said Zeth Isaksson, a sociologist in electoral behavior at Stockholm University and a political scientist at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. “People discuss who is going to be in government, and that’s what the election is about.”
There are two major political blocs: one with four parties on the right and another with four parties on the left. So the big question is not so much which party wins as which side can put together a majority. Individual parties need a minimum 4% of the vote to win parliamentary seats.
On the face of it, “it would be a sensation if the opposition parties, having been ahead in the opinion polls pretty much for four years since the last election, didn’t now win a majority,” said Nicholas Aylott, associate professor of political science at Södertörn University.
But he said that an “extremely defensive” campaign by the Social Democrats may have cost them some support, leaving some voters wondering why they should support the party. The right-wing bloc's hope of convincing voters that it's more united than its rivals may have had “a little impact,” he added.
One significant thing is different in this election. The Sweden Democrats, who in 2022 took 20.5% of the vote to become the biggest party on the right, can expect Cabinet seats if power doesn't change hands.
Kristersson announced in April that his conservative Moderates would allow them into government if the right has a majority — though he would remain prime minister, even if the Sweden Democrats are the stronger party.
The Sweden Democrats were founded in the 1980s by people who had been active in right-wing extremist groups, including neo-Nazis. They toned down their rhetoric and expelled openly racist members under Jimmie Åkesson, who has led them since 2005 and overseen their growth from what was once a marginal party.
“There’s some, I won’t say fear, but trepidation, apprehension about the possibility of Sweden Democrat ministers,” Aylott said, and the Social Democrats recently have tried to exploit that.
But even as parties on the populist right gain elsewhere in Europe, for instance in a far-right triumph in a weekend state election in Germany, the election may reinforce the impression that the Sweden Democrats “have peaked to some extent,” Isaksson said.
“The biggest threat to Sweden’s security is from the war in Ukraine and there is almost complete consensus in Sweden about support for Ukraine and deep antipathy toward Russia,” Aylott said.
Sweden's Psychological Defense Agency said that the country's election isn't Russia's top priority, as that broad support reduces the incentive for Moscow to interfere.
However, just over a week before the election, Expo magazine published a report alleging that a civil servant working in parliament for the Sweden Democrats had spread Russian state narratives on social networks. Her partner is the head of the party's office for coordination with the government, Gustav Gellerbrant.
Gellerbrant said her posts were taken out of context and were meant as irony and sarcasm. He said he decided to go on parental leave to avoid shifting the focus of the election campaign.
Kristersson, who said that “there is no room for pro-Russian narratives in Sweden,” welcomed that decision.
After decades of post-World War II neutrality and centuries of broader nonalignment with major powers, Sweden joined NATO in 2024 as the trans-Atlantic military alliance’s 32nd member. The move to join was initiated by Andersson's government after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and completed under Kristersson.
Sweden's Center Party leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist, left, campaigns with former party leader Annie Lööf in Stockholm, Sweden, Saturday Sept. 5, 2026, ahead of the general election on Sept. 13. (Stefan Jerrevång/TT via AP)
Sweden Democrats party leader Jimmie Åkesson (SD) presents the party's election manifesto for 2026 at Stora torget in Nyköping, Sweden, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (Magnus Lejhall/TT News Agency via AP)
Sweden Democrats party leader Jimmie Åkesson (SD) presents the party's election manifesto for 2026 at Stora torget in Nyköping, Sweden, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (Magnus Lejhall/TT News Agency via AP)
Sweden's Social Democratic Party leader Magdalena Andersson gives a speech in Stockholm, Sweden, Saturday Sept. 5, 2026, ahead of general election on Sept. 13. (Jonathan Näckstrand/TT via AP)
Swedish Moderate Party Ministers, from left, Pål Jonson, Ulf Kristersson, Gunnar Strömmer, Elisabeth Svantesson and Maria Malmer Stenergard hold an election rally in Malmö, Sweden, Saturday Sept. 5, 2026, ahead of general election on Sept. 13. (Johan Nilsson/TT via AP)
