Congo counts 344 Ebola cases as Kenya blocks a quarantine site

The Democratic Republic of the Congo's public health ministry said 344 Ebola cases had been confirmed across three provinces. That figure was the ministry's confirmed count, separate from earlier suspected-death totals. The outbreak was still the reference point for travel rules and quarantine fights.

A court in Kenya blocked the United States from opening a new Ebola quarantine facility for three weeks. The order followed protests against the site in which two people were killed. Youths had gathered in Nanyuki against a quarantine center at Laikipia Air Base for Americans exposed to the virus.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the United States would reengage with Gavi during the outbreak. An American physician who contracted Ebola in Congo was discharged from Charite hospital in Berlin. The discharge was a single patient's outcome, not a declaration that the epidemic was over.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the United States had passed 2,000 measles cases for a second year in a row, with 2,030 cases recorded in Washington, D.C., and 38 states. Bangladesh's health directorate reported three children dead from measles in a 24-hour span. The measles counts were separate from the Ebola totals but sat in the same week's health reports.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge and DIOSynVax reported the first human clinical trial of an AI-designed vaccine aimed at coronaviruses including SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, and potentially Ebola. The trial was a research step, not a licensed shot for the Congolese outbreak. It was still the week's clearest link between new vaccine work and the viruses already in the news.

South Africa's agriculture minister John Steenhuisen said the country had approved vaccines for bird flu. Arizona reported its first death from the Sin Nombre strain of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Those items widened the health list beyond Ebola without changing Congo's 344 confirmed cases.