Videos · October 10, 2026 · 39 seconds

Ebola at 50: The Vaccine Built for a Different Strain

Name: Ebola at 50: The Vaccine Built for a Different Strain
Uploaded: 2026-10-10T19:20:00.000Z
Duration: 39 s
Description: Fifty years after Ebola was identified, Congo's deadliest outbreak has reached Kenya, and the vaccine being used against it was designed for a different strain. The gap shows how the world's Ebola tools came to stop at the edge of one species.

Fifty years after Ebola was identified, Congo's deadliest outbreak has reached Kenya, and the vaccine being used against it was designed for a different strain. The gap shows how the world's Ebola tools came to stop at the edge of one species.

Read the full articleby Adam Canissario

Transcript

EBOLA AT 50: THE VACCINE BUILT FOR A DIFFERENT STRAIN

[CONGO, 2026] Congo's deadliest Ebola outbreak.

Fifty years after Ebola was first identified there in 1976, the 2026 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo had killed more than 4,000 people by October and spread to Kenya.
This outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo, one of four Ebola species that infect people, but the vaccine Congo received in August 2026 was built against another species, called Zaire.

[THE VACCINE GAP] Built for the last epidemic.

That vaccine, Ervebo, was rushed through trials after the Zaire species killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, and no one yet knows whether it protects against Bundibugyo.
The first vaccine designed for Bundibugyo began human trials at the University of Oxford only in July, so for now Congo's health workers are getting Ervebo.

Read the full article at noozify.com. Images: Images: Sister Marietta among the graves at Yambuku, Zaire, 1976, by Dr. Lyle Conrad, and a nurse in protective gear at Kikwit, Zaire, 1995, by Ethleen Lloyd (both CDC, public domain); pharmacists preparing Ebola trial vaccine doses in Monrovia, Liberia, 2015, by Sally Hodgson for NIAID (CC BY 2.0); all via Wikimedia Commons. Music: an original score for Noozify.