Why Is Ebola Harder to Contain Now?

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]So, there have been quite a few outbreaks over the years. I think this is the 17th outbreak in the DRC. What makes this one different is that it's a different strain from the more recent outbreaks. And in the large outbreak in 2014 that I was part of in West Africa, we were able to develop new treatments and a new vaccine for those other strains that have meant that subsequent outbreaks, while they've been serious, they've been much easier to control.

[00:00:24]Now, the reason this is seeing uh such a large outbreak is that some of the diagnostics of vaccines they don't work for this strain. And so, it does feel like we're putting the clock back to the technologies we had in 2014, making it much more challenging.