An outbreak of a rare Ebola strain in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has cast its pall over Canada.
Health authorities in Ontario announced Wednesday that a resident who’d recently travelled to the East African region was now being tested for exposure to the Bundibugyo strain of the severe, often fatal disease.
Simultaneously, an Air France flight bound for Detroit was diverted to Montreal because a Congolese passenger had boarded “in error” when departing Paris.
Here’s what to know about the threat of Ebola in Canada and the outbreak in East Africa.
What’s happening in Ontario?
In a statement to National Post, the Ontario Ministry of Health said the person, whose symptoms were not released, is being “assessed in hospital.”
“Out of an abundance of caution, clinicians are testing the patient for a range of possible infectious diseases, including Ebola virus, given their recent travel history, in accordance with established clinical protocols,” they wrote.
“All appropriate infection prevention and control measures are in place.”
The Ministry did not specify in which country the person may have been exposed to the virus, nor when they returned to Canada, but said there are no other confirmed cases in the province.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) told National Post Thursday that a sample is being tested at its National Microbiology Laboratory and results are expected within 24 hours.
What caused the Air France flight diversion to Montreal?
The Air France flight was diverted to Montreal-Pierre-Elliott Trudeau International Airport around 5 p.m. EST Wednesday at the request of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency.
An agency spokesperson told National Post via email that the passenger should not have been allowed to board the plane due to “entry restrictions put in place to reduce risk of the Ebola virus” and that CBP “took decisive action” in prohibiting its landing in the U.S.
On Monday, the U.S. Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and Department of Homeland Security announced new travel restrictions for all passengers without U.S. passports who have been in the DRC, Uganda or neighbouring South Sudan within the past 21 days. The latter nation is not currently experiencing any Ebola cases , according to Sudans Post.
Effective Thursday, all passengers whose flight originated from those countries or who visited them in the last 21 days — including U.S. citizens — will be routed directly to Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia for assessment, according to a DHS document published online.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Health Alert Network Health Advisory to alert clinicians, public health practitioners, and travelers about a new outbreak of Ebola disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda caused by the Bundibugyo… pic.twitter.com/cxGfDxGJ7n
— CDC (@CDCgov) May 19, 2026
An American doctor who was exposed while caring for patients in DRC has been transferred to a hospital in Germany for treatment, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
As for the Congolese passenger in question, a spokesperson for PHAC told National Post in an email that they disembarked and were assessed by a quarantine officer who “determined they were asymptomatic” before being returned to Paris.
A spokesperson for Air France confirmed the incident in an email, but was not able to release any information on the passenger’s whereabouts upon return, citing privacy considerations.
The flight was allowed to continue on to Detroit, where it landed later that evening, according to Flight Aware . The number of passengers wasn’t immediately available, but the seating capacity on the Boeing 777 used is 328, according to Flightseatmap.com .
What is the latest on the outbreak in East Africa?
After a DRC hospital noticed a cluster of health-care workers falling severely ill in early May, it notified the WHO, whose subsequent testing proved positive for the Bundibugyo strain, one of four types of orthoebolaviruses that result in Ebola disease, one for which a vaccine doesn’t exist.
The organization declared it a “public health emergency of international concern” last weekend.
In a press conference Wednesday , WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at least 139 people are suspected to have died from the virus, almost all of them in the DRC, where the bulk of the nearly 600 suspected cases are located.
Yesterday I convened an Emergency Committee on the #Ebola outbreak in the #DRC and #Uganda. The Committee agreed that the situation is a public health emergency of international concern. @WHO assesses the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels, and low… pic.twitter.com/HBNSGXSqJe
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) May 20, 2026
He said there are currently 51 confirmed cases in DRC and only two in Uganda, both carried by people who were in DRC, one of whom has since died.
Ghebreyesus said the scale of the epidemic is much larger,” and that the WHO expects “those numbers to keep increasing given the amount of time the virus was circulating before the outbreak was detected.”
Making matters worse, he explained, is the transmission between health-care workers leading to deaths, “significant population movement in the area” and the ongoing conflict between armed groups that has “escalated significantly over the past two months, with over 100,000 people displaced.”
“The area is also a mining zone, with high levels of population movement that increase the risk of further spread,” he said.
The global risk, Ghebreyesus said, remains low, and the outbreak does not meet the threshold for pandemic status.
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