Ethiopia Declares Marburg Outbreak Over After 42 Days With No New Cases

On a humid December morning in the southern Ethiopian town of Jinka, health workers in full protective gear carried a simple coffin to a graveyard on the edge of town. The person inside was the last confirmed patient in Ethiopia’s first known outbreak of Marburg virus disease, a highly lethal hemorrhagic fever related to Ebola.

The burial on Dec. 14, 2025, followed strict infection-prevention rules: no touching of the body, no washing by family, no open casket. It also became the reference point for a 42-day countdown. When that period passed without any new infections, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health declared on Jan. 26 that the outbreak was over.

The announcement marked the end of a three-month emergency that began with an unexplained cluster of fevers in a remote border region and triggered an intensive response by Ethiopian authorities, the World Health Organization and regional and international partners. Nineteen people were ultimately classified as cases—14 confirmed and five probable—and 14 died, including two health workers.

“This was the first time Ethiopia was reporting a MVD outbreak,” the World Health Organization said in a statement, using the acronym for Marburg virus disease. The organization’s Africa office called the government’s declaration “the end of its first-ever outbreak of Marburg virus disease.”

How the outbreak began

The outbreak started quietly. On Nov. 12, 2025, health officials in Jinka, a town in South Omo Zone in Ethiopia’s South Ethiopia Regional State, reported several patients with symptoms consistent with a viral hemorrhagic fever. Two days later, testing at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute’s National Reference Laboratory in Addis Ababa confirmed the presence of Marburg virus. The Ministry of Health publicly announced the country’s first Marburg outbreak that same day.

At the time of confirmation, six cases had been laboratory confirmed and three deaths were considered probable Marburg cases. Some of the earliest deaths were buried in the community without infection-control measures, raising immediate concern that the virus could spread more widely.

What Marburg is—and why it is dangerous

Marburg virus is rare but severe. It is carried by fruit bats and can pass to humans, who then transmit it through direct contact with blood, bodily fluids or contaminated materials. Symptoms typically include high fever, severe headache, vomiting and diarrhea, followed in some cases by bleeding and organ failure.

There are no licensed vaccines and no specific antiviral treatments; care consists of rehydration and management of complications.

A rapid response and expanding surveillance

Within days of confirmation, Ethiopian authorities activated national and regional Public Health Emergency Operations Centers, set up an incident management system and drafted a three-month response plan. A national task force at the Ministry of Health coordinated the effort with regional health bureaus in South Ethiopia and neighboring Sidama Region.

Health Minister Mekdes Daba later described the outcome as the result of aggressive measures. “The victory is the fruit of rigorous monitoring and containment strategies that effectively stifled the transmission of the virus,” she said at a public health forum marking the end of the outbreak.

Investigators traced the first known cases to Jinka and surrounding districts in South Omo. As surveillance intensified, additional infections were identified in Malle and Dasench woredas and, later, in the city of Hawassa in Sidama Region, where one patient had traveled from Jinka. Fears were heightened by the region’s proximity to South Sudan and the presence of mobile pastoralist communities that move across porous borders and remote areas.

Regional public health officials warned early on that the location mattered. The director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Jean Kaseya, said the outbreak was particularly worrying because “South Sudan isn’t far and has a fragile health system.”

To prevent the virus from getting that far, Ethiopian teams and their partners pursued expansive contact tracing and testing. In total, 857 contacts were identified—760 in South Ethiopia and 97 in Sidama—and monitored daily for 21 days, the maximum known incubation period for Marburg. None developed confirmed disease after the last case died in mid-December.

At the same time, laboratories scaled up. By early January, roughly 3,800 samples had been tested for Marburg, an unusually high number given the small size of the outbreak. Officials say the volume reflects a deliberate choice to test liberally in order to rule out hidden chains of transmission.

Risks to health workers

The effort took a toll on front-line health workers. Three became infected with Marburg during the outbreak; two died and one recovered. Their infections underscored the risks involved in caring for patients and handling bodies in conditions that can include limited equipment and high patient volumes.

WHO and Africa CDC supported Ethiopia with technical expertise, supplies and personnel. WHO said it assisted with coordination, surveillance, laboratory work, case management, infection prevention and control, logistics and risk communication. The agency initially assessed the risk as high at the national level, moderate at the regional level and low globally.

Experimental tools, familiar fundamentals

The response also featured a newer tool: investigational medical countermeasures. On Dec. 4, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it would provide up to 2,500 doses of an experimental Marburg vaccine developed by the Sabin Vaccine Institute and up to 25 treatment courses of an experimental monoclonal antibody therapy from Mapp Biopharmaceutical.

“HHS is taking the Marburg virus outbreak seriously, and we are acting early,” the department said in a statement at the time.

The products, which have not been licensed, were intended primarily for use among high-risk groups such as health workers and close contacts of confirmed cases, under emergency protocols and with informed consent. Ethiopian and U.S. officials have not yet released detailed data on how many doses were administered or what impact they had on the course of the outbreak.

Public health agencies involved in the response have emphasized that core control measures—case identification, isolation, contact tracing, safe burials and public communication—remained the foundation of containment.

Declaring the outbreak over—and what comes next

By mid-December, the outbreak curve had flattened. The last confirmed patient died on Dec. 14 and was buried under what WHO describes as “safe and dignified burial” procedures, designed to respect families while preventing exposure to infectious remains. When two full incubation cycles—42 days—passed without new confirmed infections, the government announced the outbreak’s end on Jan. 26.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States later noted that no Marburg cases linked to the Ethiopian outbreak were detected outside the country. “No cases of Marburg related to this outbreak have been reported outside of Ethiopia,” the agency said. “The risk of Marburg infection in the United States is low.”

Even as they welcomed the end of the outbreak, international agencies pointed to broader trends. Marburg virus was first identified in 1967 and has caused fewer than two dozen recorded outbreaks worldwide, but recent years have seen a cluster of events in East Africa. Rwanda reported its first known Marburg outbreak in 2024, followed by Tanzania in early 2025 and now Ethiopia.

Public health experts cite a combination of factors in the region: the presence of fruit bat colonies that serve as reservoirs, expanding human settlement and land use that bring people into closer contact with wildlife, and high mobility across borders.

Inside Ethiopia, the Marburg response unfolded alongside other emergencies. The country has been battling outbreaks of cholera, measles and dengue fever and managing humanitarian needs in areas affected by conflict and displacement. WHO officials have argued that containing Marburg in less than three months under those conditions suggests gains in Ethiopia’s emergency preparedness, particularly in laboratory capacity and incident management.

The official end of the outbreak does not mean the risk has disappeared. WHO and CDC say Ethiopia has moved into a 90-day period of enhanced surveillance to watch for any re-emergence of the virus. Health authorities are also working to address stigma that survivors and affected families can face and to maintain community trust built during the response.

In Jinka and the surrounding districts, daily life has largely resumed. Markets have reopened fully, and movement has normalized along roads that connect the area with other parts of Ethiopia and neighboring countries. For the families of the 14 people who died, including the last patient buried under the eyes of a heavily protected burial team, the virus has left a lasting mark. For health officials, the small, deadly cluster is both a sign that rapid containment is possible and a reminder that Marburg has now surfaced in yet another corner of the continent—and is likely to do so again.