Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this week warned that the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring Uganda could escalate into a “very significant pandemic” across parts of Africa.
“I suspect this is going to become a very significant pandemic, probably going to leak into Tanzania, leak into southern Sudan, maybe leak into Rwanda,” Redfield told Elizabeth Vargas on NewsNation.
“It’s going to be very disruptive,” he added.
Watch Redfield’s commentary here:
“This is an outbreak right now that is really a significant outbreak that’s of significant public health international concern, partially because what you said, it wasn’t recognized very quickly. I’m not sure why,” Redfield said earlier in the interview.
The Donald Trump-appointed Redfield, who led the CDC from 2018 to 2021, noted there were three Ebola outbreaks during his tenure. Each time, he said, outbreaks were detected when there were 10 cases “at most.”
But “this one really wasn’t picked up until there was over 100 cases,” he added, meaning early efforts to contain its spread were delayed.
With more than 500 suspected cases and “close to 150 deaths already,” Redfield warned the outbreak is now “moving very rapidly.”
The World Health Organization last week declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, though stopped short of calling it a pandemic on the scale of COVID-19.
On its website, the CDC said “no Ebola cases associated with this outbreak have been reported in the United States, and the risk to the general public remains low.”
However, it said it has increased “public health screening and traveler monitoring for individuals arriving from the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan,” and imposed “entry restrictions on non-U.S. passport holders if they have been in Uganda, DRC, or South Sudan in the previous 21 days.”