Kenya confirms an eighth Ebola case as the Congo outbreak reaches an eighth province

19 October 2026

Kenyan health authorities confirmed an eighth Ebola case, after one of 38 people tested on Sunday returned a positive result. Health Ministry Director-General Patrick Amoth said the patient is a 49-year-old man, not a health worker, who worked as a patient attendant cleaning utensils and linen, developed fever, headache and muscle pain, and was likely exposed to Kenya's first Ebola case. Patients in quarantine were being tested after developing symptoms, and the other six patients were stable on supportive treatment. On Saturday the ministry had reported four new cases, three of them health workers who treated the first patient. Kenya's first case travelled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Nairobi and died at a Nairobi hospital on October 5. The outbreak is of the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment. The DRC has recorded at least 9,400 cases and more than 4,500 deaths since the outbreak was declared in May, with Ituri province accounting for almost three-quarters of confirmed cases, and the government said on Sunday that the virus had reached an eighth province, North Ubangi, where two cases including one death were recorded. North Kivu province is introducing a one-week ban from Monday on people entering from Ituri.