Ebola outbreak won't cause global pandemic: Former CDC Director

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]And that's now former CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield. Good morning to you and thank you for your time. As we as we learn more about Ebola, I think it's also important to point out the origins of this disease. Uh where does it come from and why is it so deadly?

[00:00:15]You know, it's it's a bat virus um that uh intermittently crosses over to infect humans.

[00:00:23]Probably one of the ways that it does it um most commonly is uh children where for example will pick up fruit in the jungle that's been bitten because the bats find and bite the the sweetest fruit.

[00:00:36]Uh and then they can get infected from that. Um so it's not an easy virus to transmit uh human to human. Usually it's to when people are really sick and people have close contact with those individuals, particularly health care professionals.

[00:00:52]Um I think there's been some misunderstanding a little in the press.

[00:00:56]This is not a type of virus that's going to cause a pandemic.

[00:00:59]That's not what these viruses do. That's more restricted to our respiratory pathogens, but it is causing a a significant outbreak. This outbreak right now is now the third largest of all the outbreak in the history of the world already and it just started May 15th. So it has the potential to become quite a significant Ebola outbreak. I was the CDC director when we had the second largest Ebola outbreak in 2018 in the same region with about 3,400 uh and 70 cases. Uh so this is a significant issue and you know, we are concerned because of you as you commented, this is an area that's been in conflict for over 25 years and as a consequence of the conflict, there's over a million people that have been uh disengaged from their housing that are migrating uh across borders. So this is going to be probably a significant uh outbreak that has the potential to go regional into South Sudan. I will lastly say that this is an area that has enormous experience.

[00:02:04]The the DRC, this is their 17th Ebola outbreak since 1976.

[00:02:10]Uganda has a lot of experience also. Less so, say Sudan, and therefore more concerned there.

[00:02:17]But these are highly experienced public health communities in responding to Ebola, but the real the real problem is >> the conflict. The fact that this is in a conflict zone is going to be a problem.

[00:02:29]Right. And and because of transmission, which you say is difficult person to person, but when the person is is dead and it's either blood or bodily fluids, as I understand it, and the transport of that person is how it spreads, which comes into question. They're trying to get these these deceased bodies out, which causes a greater challenge. That's a real problem. And you know, that's one of the things we had to do. I had three Ebola outbreaks during my time as CDC director in the DRC. Um and one of the things we really worked hard is to educate the people that we didn't want them washing the body of the dead. You know, let that be done by the medical groups in in the proper containment gear, but it was very hard. And a lot of cultural issues, and as you saw, a lot of the people, they want the bodies of their dead. And then you saw they burned down the hospital to go after the bodies of the dead. That's obviously a very dangerous thing to do because those individuals, once they died, are highly, highly infectious.

[00:03:27]Yeah. Uh real quick, I know I heard you say this is not a a pandemic type threat, um but we also know that diseases are an airplane ride away.

[00:03:36]We've seen the CDC now screening passengers at US airports from a health precautionary standpoint. What what is necessary to make sure that a disease like this or any other doesn't come into the US? Yeah, I think CDC, again, I have a a of confidence in them. I think they made the appropriate recommendations.

[00:03:54]Uh you know, they have uh restricted travel for non-US citizens from Sudan, Uganda, and the DRC at present.

[00:04:03]Uh and then those individuals that are US citizens, they've allowed them to come in, but they funnel them through initially it's Dallas Airport. They're going to be I think opening Atlanta Airport and then Houston Airport. And individuals that come from those areas will be screened by trained uh uh public health officials to look at them for risk assessments. And then they will be monitored uh fairly carefully by the public health community for the 21-day incubation period. It's possible we'll have a sporadic case here and there. We had you know, we had four in the 2014 uh epidemic.

[00:04:39]Um but uh this is not going to be a major threat to the United States. It's going to be inconvenient for international travelers. Understood.

[00:04:50]Dr. Redfield, thanks you sir for your time.

[00:04:52]Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. God bless you. You too. Thank you for watching. Subscribe below and download our NewsNation app right now on your phone and you will get fact-based unbiased news for all Americans.