The World Health Organization has announced that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will receive 70,000 doses of Merck’s Ervebo Ebola vaccine to support efforts to contain the country’s largest Ebola outbreak on record. The vaccine allocation follows a formal request by the DRC last week for doses from the global Ebola virus disease vaccine stockpile, which is managed by the International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Vaccine Provision.
The Ervebo vaccine is currently approved to prevent illness caused by Ebola Zaire, the most prevalent Ebola strain. Its effectiveness against Ebola Bundibugyo — the strain responsible for the ongoing outbreak in DRC — has not yet been established. Of the 70,000 doses allocated, 20,000 will be utilized in a late-stage clinical trial aimed at evaluating the vaccine’s efficacy against the Bundibugyo strain.
The current outbreak marks the deadliest Ebola epidemic in the DRC’s history, with more than 5,000 confirmed cases and 2,378 reported fatalities, according to official government data. This surpasses the severity of the previous major outbreak that occurred between 2018 and 2020. In response to the escalating health crisis, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently reaffirmed the situation in eastern Congo as a global health emergency.