The Numbers Got Worse. Fast.

When we last covered this story, the WHO was tracking 336 suspected cases. As of May 24, 2026, that number has more than doubled to nearly 750 suspected cases and close to 200 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

This marks a significant escalation. A detection failure may be at play.

Birx: We're Looking at Old Data

Dr. Deborah Birx — former White House COVID Task Force coordinator and the U.S. official who helped manage the 2014 Ebola response — appeared on CBS's Face the Nation on May 24 and said something that should concern everyone.

"The people we are seeing today that are cases were probably infected two weeks ago," Birx told anchor Nancy Cordes. "We're looking at this virus and this outbreak with really old data."

Her assessment: the virus completed two, three, or four full infection cycles before anyone even reported it. That's why the numbers exploded all at once. It didn't accelerate — it was always there. We just weren't looking.

Birx was blunt about what that means practically: she can't tell you whether new cases are rising or falling right now, because the data is too stale. In an acute outbreak, that's the only question that matters.

The Paris-to-Detroit Plane Diversion

This week a flight from Paris to Detroit was diverted to Montreal after a passenger from the Congo was mistakenly allowed to board despite a travel ban. Birx addressed the incident directly.

She called the diversion the right call and said it proved the travel ban enforcement is working — when it's actually enforced. "When you have a travel ban, you have to really enforce it. And that's what they did when they diverted the plane," she told CBS News.

She also noted the U.S. has strengthened hospital infrastructure since the 2014 outbreak, including bio-containment facilities at multiple hospitals. On domestic risk, she emphasized preparedness while warning against complacency.

The USAID Question

NBC News spoke to a dozen former federal employees from USAID, CDC, NIH, and the White House. Their consistent claim: the Trump administration's 2025 gutting of USAID directly slowed outbreak detection in Congo.

Nicholas Enrich, former acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, put it plainly: "What we've lost is speed, which is the most important thing in an outbreak like this."

Enrich told NBC News that intact USAID programs could have helped Congolese labs detect the virus earlier, gotten personal protective equipment to hospitals faster, and kept trained community health workers on the ground — the exact people who trace contacts and catch outbreaks early.

Dr. Daniel Bausch, visiting faculty at the Geneva Graduate Institute and former CDC medical officer, described what actually happened to those trained workers: "Now they're driving a taxi in Kinshasa or selling fruit somewhere."

The International Rescue Committee — a former USAID grantee — confirmed to NBC News that U.S. funding cuts in 2025 forced it to downsize operations in Ituri, Congo. That's ground zero.

Important Context

Left-leaning outlets are highlighting the USAID angle, and the facts support legitimate scrutiny there. But the full picture is more complex.

First: Congo has had 17 or 18 Ebola outbreaks in the last 20 to 30 years, per Birx. The DRC has chronic governance, infrastructure, and health system problems that predate any American funding decisions by decades.

Second: the detection failure happened over three to four weeks of undetected spread. USAID funding was cut in early 2025. That's over a year before this outbreak. The former officials making causal claims are speculating — credibly, but speculating. No one has proven a direct line.

Right-leaning outlets are leading with reassurances from Trump's former COVID adviser and mostly burying the USAID infrastructure question entirely.

The evidence supports this: cutting the people who watch for outbreaks probably did not help. Whether it caused this specific detection delay remains unclear.

What This Means for You

The immediate domestic risk remains low. Ebola is NOT COVID — it spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, not through the air. Birx confirmed U.S. hospitals have bio-containment capacity.

But the bigger picture is this: 750 suspected cases with 200 dead, and nobody knows the real slope of the outbreak right now. The data is two weeks stale. The community health workers are driving taxis. And one person already made it onto a transatlantic flight.

Good outbreak response is fast, local, and data-rich. By all accounts from people who've done this before, this outbreak is none of those three things.