The Hong Kong government has announced enhanced health checks for travelers arriving at the airport from Africa, due to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda.
According to a report by Lusa, the region’s Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said it had implemented the lowest of the three alert levels outlined in the outbreak response plan and confirmed the deployment of teams to the airport.
The goal is “to screen travelers’ temperatures at the relevant departure gates and conduct medical assessments on people exhibiting symptoms,” the CHP explained.
Despite the measure, authorities emphasized that no case of Ebola has ever been recorded in Hong Kong and that there are no direct flights between the territory and the DRC or Uganda.
“The CHP consulted with the industry and found that travelers from these regions generally choose to stop over in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia,” the statement said, released on Sunday (17) evening.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on Sunday—the second-highest level—in response to the Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda.
According to a statement released by the WHO, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus determined that the virus “does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency.”
The latest data indicate that the outbreak has already caused at least 88 deaths, with 336 suspected cases, in the DRC. In Uganda, two confirmed cases with no apparent link were reported in the capital, Kampala, among people who had traveled from the DRC.
The DRC’s National Institute for Biomedical Research also confirmed the first case of Ebola virus infection in Goma, a major city in the east of the country controlled by the anti-government armed group M23.
The WHO warned that “the high positivity rate of initial samples and the confirmation of cases in Kampala and Kinshasa [the DRC’s capital] point to an outbreak that is potentially much larger than what is currently being detected.”
The organization also noted that, unlike other Ebola strains, “there are currently no approved treatments or vaccines specifically for the Bundibugyo virus.”
The institution urged neighboring countries—including Angola—and the international community to closely coordinate efforts to contain the spread and stressed that “no country should close its borders or impose restrictions on travel and trade,” warning that such measures could be counterproductive.
The DRC experienced an Ebola outbreak between August and December 2025, with at least 34 deaths. The deadliest outbreak claimed nearly 2,300 lives out of 3,500 cases between 2018 and 2020.
Ebola, which causes a highly contagious hemorrhagic fever, has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa over the past 50 years.
