NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya’s Health Ministry announced the country's second Ebola death Friday, saying a 65-year-old woman who was a close relative of the first patient died after developing symptoms while in quarantine.
The woman began showing symptoms 10 days ago and began receiving supportive care at an infectious disease unit in the capital, Nairobi.
The ministry said medical personnel “did everything possible to save her life,” but she died Friday evening.
Her family was notified, and the ministry said it would arrange a safe and dignified burial in consultation with relatives.
The remaining seven Ebola patients were receiving treatment at two isolation facilities. No new infections were reported.
Kenya announced its first ever Ebola case on Oct. 6 after a 40-year-old Kenyan man who was living in Congo travelled to Kenya via Uganda, arriving on Oct. 3. He was driven by a relative to Nairobi Hospital, where he tested positive for Ebola on Oct. 5 and died the same day.
Authorities have identified some 135 contacts of the first patient, placing 118 in quarantine. Eight tested positive while in quarantine, including four health workers and four close family members.
The health ministry said some contacts who completed the 21-day quarantine period without developing symptoms would be released starting Saturday.
In Nigeria, authorities said Friday that they were yet to verify how the country’s first Ebola patient contracted the disease. The woman tested positive for the virus upon her return to Nigeria's capital of Abuja from Uganda.
The woman — married to a Swiss diplomat in Nigeria whom she had been traveling with — did not visit Congo and “is believed to have contracted the virus whilst travelling to Uganda,” Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, or FDFA, told The Associated Press on Friday.
Her husband has not shown any symptoms and remains in isolation, the FDFA added.
Nigeria's Health Minister Muhammad Pate told reporters on Friday that the Nigerian patient “appears to be closely related" to the first case in Kenya in terms of the nature of their infection. "That may or may not change the understanding of the route of transmission given that the virus itself takes time to change,” Pate said.
The Africa CDC earlier said the first patients in Nigeria and Kenya had traveled through Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport on Oct. 3.
United States health officials this week said that all passengers boarding an international flight to the U.S. — no matter from where — must sign a statement attesting that they've not been in Congo in the previous 21 days. The U.S. has been screening travelers from Ebola-affected countries during the current outbreak.
Travelers who were in Congo in the three weeks leading to their trip will not be allowed to board flights with U.S. destinations, including Americans, the U.S. CDC said Thursday.
Ebola is highly contagious and spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, including blood and vomit, or through contact with contaminated materials and surfaces, such as bedding and clothing. Congo is experiencing its deadliest outbreak, with at least 4,000 deaths since May.
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Dyepkazah Shibayan in Abuja, Nigeria and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.
AP’s Africa coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
A man walks past a hospital in Abuja, Nigeria, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Afolabi Sotunde)
President Donald Trump on Friday said he told his administration to file its lawsuit to block certification of the U.S. Senate race in Alaska if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, kicking off what many fear could become a lengthy battle between the government and states over certifying an election where the president's party is struggling.
“I'm the one that said do it,” Trump told reporters as he landed for a campaign rally in Florida.
The lawsuit, filed late Thursday, centers on one of the president's longstanding complaints in the Senate race — the presence of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan, who Republicans fear could siphon away votes from the incumbent in what's likely to be a photo-finish contest with Democrat Mary Peltola, the state's former congresswoman.
The second Sullivan, who is Daniel J. Sullivan from the tiny fishing community of Petersburg, has said he decided to run on his own, but Republicans have contended he is a Democratic plant to siphon votes away from their candidate.
The lawsuit by the Republican president's Department of Justice in federal court in Alaska demands that the state be blocked from certifying a Peltola win if Daniel J. Sullivan remains on the ballot. “The United States accordingly brings this lawsuit to protect the integrity of the 2026 Senate election in Alaska,” the lawsuit says.
The legal challenge came 11 days before the Nov. 3 election and months after the final ballot was set. It is the latest example of the Department of Justice bolstering Trump's political operation, targeting his enemies and suing Democratic-controlled states before the election.
Democrats and many voting rights advocates have long feared that the administration will try to block certification of elections that Trump’s party loses, much as he unsuccessfully tried to do when he lost the 2020 White House race to Democrat Joe Biden.
The Alaska Supreme Court rejected a previous Republican effort to remove Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot, and the state's Republican officials made the decisions about how to list him on the ballot. He will appear without a party designation next to his name, while the senator will be listed as the Republican incumbent. Alaska's ranked choice voting system also will allow voters to select both of the men if confused.
The senator received more than 68,000 votes in the August primary, while the challenging Sullivan got 4,107, about 2% of the total vote. Peltola, who had previously served one term in the House, was the top vote-getter in the nonpartisan primary. Both parties expect that whoever wins in November will do so by a tight margin in a state of 738,000 people.
The campaign for Sen. Dan Sullivan did not address whether the senator supports the Department of Justice's intervention. “We'll let the DOJ complaint run its course,” campaign spokesman Nate Adams said in a text message. “Alaskans can tell the difference between a Democrat sideshow and Senator Sullivan's strong record of delivering for Alaska.”
Daniel J. Sullivan, whose presence on the ballot is at issue in the lawsuit, did not respond to a request for comment.
“Donald Trump knows that Dan Sullivan is going to lose the election, so now his Department of Justice is filing a sham lawsuit to overturn the will of Alaska voters and steal an election when he loses,” said Devan Barber, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Peltola, on her Substack, wrote, “This is a blatant, despicable political threat – all because a historically unpopular 12-year incumbent is scared that he’s going to lose the Senate seat that belongs to Alaskans.”
In a statement Friday, the Department of Justice noted that Alaska's election officials, who are Republicans, determined the other Sullivan's campaign was an attempt to “mislead” voters and wanted him removed from the ballot. Both a state court and Alaska's Supreme Court disagreed and kept the second Sullivan on the ballot.
"The Justice Department, consistent with the National Voter Registration Act enacted by Congress, is taking the necessary steps to ensure that this frivolous candidacy does not undermine the integrity of Alaska’s election or the will of its voters,” the department's statement said.
Concerns about the Department of Justice's role in the election had already reached a fever pitch this month after it filed an unusual, last-minute lawsuit demanding California segregate ballots from 20,000 voters who the Trump administration believed could be noncitizens. California said that it appeared many of those identified were indeed citizens and that they had no time to carefully investigate, as the administration threatened to prosecute the state's election workers if there was illegal voting.
U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche denied the action was a prelude to challenging certification of the midterm results in that state, adding that such a move may happen under a “doomsday” scenario but was unlikely.
“It is not DOJ’s intention to, and it’s never our intention to, improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process," he told reporters Thursday in Virginia before the Alaska lawsuit was filed.
The lawsuit was signed by Associate U.S. Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who represented Trump allies and Jan. 6 defendants before becoming one of the top appointees at the department.
Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said the lawsuit would likely only kick in if Republicans narrowly lose the Alaska Senate race and that it probably would not survive long. “The statute simply doesn't let the Department of Justice enjoin certification,” Muller said. “The lawsuit could well be mooted by a wide Democratic victory or a narrow Republican one, and if not, the court will likely dismiss it next month.”
The U.S. Constitution grants states the power to run their own elections. Elections for federal office like the Senate must comply with standards set by Congress. That division of power has frustrated Trump, who repeatedly has tried to seize control of election procedures through executive orders that courts have blocked.
The final step for a state election is formally certifying the winner, the act that the administration's lawsuit seeks to prevent, it requests, “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan."
The process in Alaska is complicated by the state's ranked choice voting system, which Trump opposes, and many expect it to take weeks before a winner is known. Also on the state's ballot is an initiative to repeal that system.
Trump has complained about Daniel J. Sullivan's presence on the ballot, making reference to it during a rally in Alaska this month and in repeated social media posts, including one this week where he called it “CHEATING.”
“We are looking at powerful legal options to remove the fraudulent Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. from the Ballot, and holding the Democrats accountable for their Election Interference, in the pursuit of Justice and Fairness,” the president wrote on Wednesday.
Clogging a ballot with third-party candidates to siphon off votes from the other major party is a long-standing tactic in the country's two-party system. Republicans have been linked to an effort to persuade Ohio voters to support a socialist in that state's Senate race, which could help Republican Sen. Jon Husted fend off a challenge from former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, Ali Swenson in New York and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.
This combination photo shows Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, left, in Palmer, Alaska, Aug. 17, 2026, and a candidate in Alaska's Senate race, Dan Sullivan, right, in Petersburg, Alaska, July 3, 2026. (AP Photos/Mark Thiessen/Becky Bohrer)
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump greets Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, at a campaign rally at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
President Donald Trump listens as Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, speaks at a campaign rally at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One, Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
In this photo shot with a smart phone, Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan poses ahead of a debate with Democrat Mary Peltola in Alaska's Senate race, Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026, in Anchorage, Alaska. (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer)
