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WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from senators in a Republican-led committee hearing about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The move injects new drama into the lingering tensions between Fauci and Republican lawmakers over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and accusations he lied about the origins of COVID-19, which he denies.

Fauci was set to answer lawmakers’ questions after being subpoenaed by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has long had a fraught relationship with the now-retired infectious-disease expert and led the charge seeking that he testify, again, under oath about his role in containing the pandemic.

Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth, at least for now, sidesteps calls for his prosecution if he is accused of lying at Wednesday’s hearing, part of a yearslong campaign for his arrest spearheaded by some Republicans in Congress. But it may also further inflame partisan divides that have festered for years about the origins and handling of the pandemic, which was declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020.

Fauci, who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 response, has become a target of those frustrations. But to his supporters he is an emblem of sound scientific expertise.

In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said, adding that while it pains him to do so, he is following his attorney’s advice by taking the Fifth.

Paul releases some of Fauci’s diary

Paul in his opening statement sought to build the case that Fauci helped produce the COVID-19 pandemic by approving funding of research on virus mutations and then covered up his complicity.

“Instead of an apology, you have for years avoided responsibility,” Paul said.

Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s ranking member, said that Paul’s hearing was a partisan exercise and that the hearing was looking backward instead of focusing on current national security challenges.

Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”

Some of the diary entries – including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created – already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.

But they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for mask mandates, school closures and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

Ahead of the hearing, President Trump wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt Fauci made bad decisions on masks, shutdowns and other issues.

In a statement, Fauci’s attorney David Schertler said Paul’s accusations are “false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he entered public office, said Monday that his department gave the diary entries, which were created on a government computer, to the committee. He told a Fox News Channel host that he thought Fauci might lie before the committee, opening him to perjury prosecution despite his preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Scientists scrambled to Fauci’s defense ahead of the unusual hearing — the second time the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins since leaving the government in 2022. While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced him to millions of Americans, he talked the nation through numerous outbreaks over decades, including HIV, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks, while advising seven presidents.

Some disease experts criticize the accusations against Fauci

In a public letter, more than 150 infectious-disease experts and other scientists wrote that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges” and that they are “urging our elected representatives in Congress stop these witch-hunts.”

The expected crux of Wednesday’s hearing was whether NIH-funded research in China may have played a role in how the pandemic started.

Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There’s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 did not find any evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS jumped into people.

Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded what’s known as gain of function research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact — at a lab in Wuhan.

The NIH for years gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, which used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. But the definition of gain of function covers both general research and especially risky experiments to enhance the ability of potential pandemic viruses to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment definition and that “it would be molecularly impossible” for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.

Trump, a Republican, last year paused some federally funded gain of function research, and on Tuesday his administration announced new rules to tighten oversight.

Neergaard and Swenson write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York.

July 29 (UPI) — Uganda has declared itself Ebola-free, as the virus continues to spread in neighboring the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Uganda’s Foreign Ministry made the declaration Tuesday, saying Uganda discharged its last confirmed Ebola patient on June 16.

“The declaration follows the successful completion of all outbreak response measures and confirms that there has been no further transmission of the virus,” the ministry said in a statement.

Uganda declared an Ebola outbreak on May 15, after infected individuals crossed into Uganda from the DRC.

A total of 20 people were infected in Uganda’s outbreak, including 15 Congolese nationals and five Ugandans — four health workers and a driver. Two patients died from the virus, according to ministry statistics.

Despite the declaration, the ministry said the risk of Ebola importation remains high due to the ongoing outbreak in the DRC.

Minister Chris Baryomunsi urged residents online to remain alert and continue to observe health measures.

“We shall continue to support our brothers and sisters in DRC to contain the Ebola disease there,” he said.

The outbreak that affected Uganda and remains ongoing in the DRC is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, with the first suspected case reported involving a DRC health worker on April 24. The health worker later died.

There is no approved vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus.

According to the World Health Organization, there were 3,262 cases and 1,437 deaths to the outbreak, making it the largest outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo virus to date.

The United Nations health agency said the outbreak in the DRC continued to “intensify” with sustained transmission, increasing mortality and ongoing geographic spread within the country.

“Although no new cases have been reported outside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, persistent transmission in areas connected by major national and cross-border mobility corridors continues to sustain a high risk of regional spread,” the WHO said earlier this week.

Nairobi, Kenya – The death toll from the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has surged above 1,309, an extraordinary rise of more than 40 percent in just five days, government figures show, as a leading public health consultant says the virus is “spreading like a wildfire”.

Updated data released by the government on Saturday showed that as of Thursday, the total number of confirmed cases, including deaths, had climbed to 2,973. This was a 27 percent rise from the figure last Saturday.

The unprecedented rate at which cases are increasing and deaths are mounting has made the DRC epidemic the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak ever documented.

Compounding the danger, the virus spreading in the DRC is Bundibugyo, which is the rarest of the four variants of Ebola known to affect humans and currently has no approved vaccines or treatments.

Abdulsalami Nasidi, a public health consultant who helped establish the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the African Union’s public health agency, told Al Jazeera the lack of a proven vaccine meant the virus was “spreading like a wildfire.”

Nasidi said the epidemic was unfolding in an area of active hostilities, compounding the shortage of public health resources common to African governments confronting outbreaks.

Scientists are racing to find a way to slow the epidemic, and the University of Oxford’s Oxford Vaccine Group said a volunteer had received the first dose of a rapidly developed experimental vaccine on Friday.

“This is an important milestone for the trial, and marks the next phase in our multinational collaborative journey to develop a Bundibugyo ebolavirus vaccine,” said the Oxford team’s chief investigator, Katrina Pollock.

The largest and deadliest Ebola outbreak in history killed more than 11,000 people out of at least 28,000 cases between 2013 and 2016, primarily in West Africa across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

That outbreak took about eight months to reach the first 1,000 deaths. The latest epidemic in the DRC has done so in less than 10 weeks.

“We must act now,” Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya wrote in a post on X last week. “If we do not stop it today, this will become the worst outbreak the world has ever documented.”

Al Jazeera’s Alain Uaykani, reporting from the DRC city of Goma, said the government’s response had lacked coordination and urgency, leaving medical personnel overstretched and working in poor conditions.

He said the death toll among health workers continued to climb on Saturday, with a doctor and a health worker among the latest victims.

More than 100 health workers have been infected since the outbreak was declared in May, and around 35 have died, a toll compounded by shortages of protective equipment and, in some communities, hostility from residents who question whether the disease is real.

An increasing number of healthcare workers at several medical facilities in the northeastern province of Ituri, the epicentre of the outbreak, have gone on strike over unpaid wages and unsafe working conditions.

Last week, dozens of workers at Rwampara General Hospital near Bunia went on strike. The hospital operates a major Ebola treatment centre, parts of which were set ablaze in May by angry residents who also chased after health workers fleeing in trucks.

The latest strike began on Saturday at the Elikya Ebola Treatment Centre in the provincial capital of Bunia. Activities were largely paralysed as doctors, nurses and security staff stopped work.

Approximately 100 workers held a protest outside the centre, saying unpaid bonuses were undermining morale and disrupting patient care.

“We need to be paid, because in the meantime the disease is spreading at the treatment centre,” Martin Bolombi, one of the striking workers, told The Associated Press. “I’ve already had five people die who are still inside there. A solution must be found for us,”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that the true number of cases could be more than double the official count, as insecurity continues to restrict access to affected communities.

Contact tracing now reaches roughly 80 percent of known contacts, he said, but response teams still cannot reach every village or deploy where they are needed most.

The United States and Canada have both restricted entry for travellers who have recently been in the DRC, measures that run counter to the WHO’s own guidance issued in May, when it declared the outbreak a global health emergency.

Tedros has called for a ceasefire in the conflict gripping eastern DRC, arguing that medical resources alone are not enough to tackle the crisis, and political action is needed to open up access for responders before the virus takes hold in provinces not yet affected.

Walkout over late payments comes as public health officials confirm that the virus has reached two more provinces.

Staff at a hospital treating Ebola patients in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have gone on strike, alleging they have not been paid for months, bringing the facility to a standstill.

Dozens of employees at Rwampara General Hospital in Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, walked off the job on Monday. The strike action came as authorities revealed that the virus has spread to two further provinces in northern DRC.

The striking workers included epidemiologists, case investigators, drivers and gravediggers.

“We don’t know how it is possible to not have been paid for two months,” Bahati Claude, a health worker at the centre, told The Associated Press.

The outbreak, concentrated in northern DRC, is the worst in Africa’s history and has already caused severe economic damage, pushing nearly one million people into poverty, according to the United Nations.

Efforts to hold back the spread of the virus have been complicated by the presence of paramilitary rebels, who control parts of the region in a bid to access its valuable mineral deposits.

The response to the outbreak has also been complicated by misinformation, deeply rooted burial practices and a lack of trust in health officials.

Health workers have been attacked by communities that believe the disease is a form of witchcraft, while bereaved families have ignored safety protocols by holding traditional burial ceremonies.

DRC’s National Public Health Institute confirmed on Sunday that the virus has spread to two new northeastern provinces: Haut-Uele and Tshopo.

The World Health Organization has warned that an accelerated response from local, national and international partners is urgently needed to bring the outbreak under control.

DRC Health Minister Roger Kamba said last week that the government was working to resolve the payroll issues and ensure employees were paid.

“We must ensure that these payments reach the right people,” Kamba said. “We have faced a few challenges, notably changes to the lists, which have led to complaints from people saying they are not being paid even though they are working. We have the means to sort this out.”

According to the latest figures, the number of Ebola cases in the DRC has risen to 1,926, with 702 deaths. The spread of the disease to Haut-Uele and Tshopo means five provinces now have confirmed Ebola cases.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has warned that the situation is worsening in areas already affected as transmission accelerates, while the risk of the disease spreading to neighbouring South Sudan is increasing as the outbreak expands into new areas.

Meanwhile, a second United States citizen infected with Ebola was admitted to a special isolation unit at Frankfurt University Hospital in Germany on Monday. Timo Wolf, head of the special isolation unit, said the patient’s condition was “currently stable”.

The man, who is in his 60s, was confirmed to have contracted the disease on Friday while working for a Christian aid group in the DRC.

WASHINGTON — While millions of soccer fans cheer or groan over World Cup matches spanning North America, health officials are on high alert for germs.

A heat wave may be the most obvious health threat. But infectious diseases can spread in a crowd, and experts are scrutinizing wastewater, hospital visits, even social media for any signs that an outbreak might be brewing.

Measles, one of the most contagious diseases, is among the top concerns, sparking a warning this week from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO. With a nearly six-week stretch of packed stadiums, bars and tourist sites in 16 cities, officials are on the lookout for a long list of infections, from the stomach bug norovirus to mosquito-borne dengue fever.

“This is truly a marathon,” said Palak Raval-Nelson, Philadelphia’s health commissioner.

The mass gatherings come at a tense moment for budget-strapped health agencies in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hit hard by Trump administration staffing cuts, already was grappling with a growing Ebola outbreak in central Africa and a cruise ship hantavirus outbreak. While CDC officials have advised state and local health departments behind the scenes, it’s expected World Cup disease surveillance dashboard still was “in final development” days before games began, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Our public health professionals are pretty stretched,” said global health specialist Rebecca Katz of Georgetown University, who is leading an unusual new hub to help.

At the Health Security Operations Center, a joint effort between Georgetown and MedStar Health, workers are analyzing data from around the country so they can alert health authorities, even emergency rooms, to any early signs of trouble. The center is issuing daily “situation reports” about disease trends around World Cup host cities and team base camps to several hundred local and federal public health groups, emergency management and hospital officials and others who’ve signed up.

“It’s important that we don’t become alarmist,” said MedStar emergency medicine specialist Dr. Shane Kappler. “We’re trying to be the insurance policy.”

Measles is a top concern for potential World Cup spread

Already more than 2,000 people in the U.S. have come down with measles this year, nearly as many as during all of last year, according to the CDC. Patients can spread measles before the rash appears and they realize they’re sick. Not too long ago, the U.S. seldom saw measles except from international travel by unvaccinated people.

Now with frequent U.S. outbreaks, “actually a lot of our international partners are worried about measles being exported to them after the games,” said Georgetown’s Katz.

Measles is spreading in Canada, too, and has exceeded 11,000 cases in Mexico, according to PAHO. It’s urging soccer fans to be sure they’re vaccinated, with a health campaign saying a single measles patient can spread the virus to up to 18 unprotected people.

Is Ebola a concern at the World Cup?

Brown University’s Dr. Craig Spencer, who survived Ebola while working in the West Africa outbreak over a decade ago, said he’s repeatedly asked about the risk of Ebola during the World Cup — but “for me, Ebola is not the No. 1 or No. 2 or even No. 3 threat.”

“I am concerned about importation of measles, I am much more concerned about the importation of other infectious threats that may not seem as scary to us as Ebola,” Spencer said.

Many health experts agree that the risk of Ebola spreading in the U.S. is very low. That’s partly because of government travel screenings and restrictions on people recently in outbreak-affected areas. Moreover, Ebola spreads by contact with bodily fluids from someone showing symptoms, not through the air like measles or respiratory viruses.

“One fortunate thing about this virus is you’re most contagious when you’re really quite ill. It’s not like COVID, where you could be sitting next to someone who doesn’t even know they’re infected and perhaps contract the virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown’s Pandemic Center.

How to spot brewing diseases

There’s precedent for germs invading major sporting events. Canadian scientists linked a community measles outbreak to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and clusters of norovirus had to be contained during the Olympics this year in Milan and in 2018 in South Korea.

One way to detect signs of trouble: People with certain viral or bacterial infections shed genetic material that sophisticated testing of wastewater can spot. For example, measles can appear in wastewater days before an emergency room sees its first patients.

A recent surveillance reports from Katz’s center note that wastewater testing recently found diarrhea-causing rotavirus, hepatitis A and norovirus in some parts of the U.S., something to watch as soccer crowds arrive.

In Dallas, officials ramped up wastewater screening including at the international airport, casting a wide net rather than looking for specific illnesses, said Dr. Phil Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services.

His team also is enhancing the usual mosquito testing, checking not just for West Nile virus that regularly spreads in the U.S. but for viruses more common in other countries like dengue and chikungunya.

Public health officials have been preparing for months, said Philadelphia’s Raval-Nelson, including with mock emergency drills and communications with counterparts around the country.

“I don’t want to send a message that there’s one key thing,” she said. “We have the frameworks in place to carry out what we need to.”

Neergaard writes for the Associated Press.

Forty-eight days, 16 hours, 57 minutes and 12 seconds after a virus transforms humanity into a blissful symbiotic horde, one of its survivors, Carol (Rhea Seehorn), treats a rooftop as a personal driving range — the golf balls shattering a neighboring building’s windows. “If you’re alone for 40 days, you’re going to go a bit crazy and be lonely,” says “Pluribus” cinematographer Paul Donachie of the series’ aesthetic, which finds surreal beauty in bland desert urbanism emptied of people. “We searched Albuquerque to find the right kind of rooftop and building to frame her in light, but with darkness around her,” he says. “We’re putting her in this box before revealing what she’s aiming at.” Along with a looser framing, shadow and contrast highlight loneliness and emotional ambiguity. As another survivor (Carlos-Manuel Vesga) makes the long journey in search of Carol, “what was interesting about this particular episode was there was no dialogue and we’re telling two little stories of what’s going on emotionally with each person,” Donachie notes. “She is trying to enjoy it and take her mind off it. But I think there’s frustration not knowing what the hell is going on in the world.”

Flavio Cobolli is through to the French Open final after fellow Italian Matteo Arnaldi withdrew minutes before their semi-final with a virus.

The good friends were supposed to meet in the last four at 18:00 BST on Friday for a place in a first Grand Slam final.

However, Arnaldi’s withdrawal was announced just 20 minutes before the players were due to step on Court Philippe Chatrier.

It puts world number 14 Cobolli straight through to Sunday’s Roland Garros showpiece, where he will face second seed and title favourite Alexander Zverev.

Arnaldi had spent 19 hours and 42 minutes on court en route to the semi-finals in Paris – the longest anyone has played on their way to the last four of a major since 1991.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), a United Nations specialised agency, has declared the resurgence of the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a case of international concern. Following the declaration of the 17th Ebola epidemic in Ituri province on Saturday, May 16, the WHO announced that the resurgence is attributed to the Bundibugyo strain found in both the DRC and Uganda. 

Tedros Ghebreyesus, WHO’s Director General, said the declaration is based on several elements, notably the high level of positivity of the first samples of tests, the already documented propagation outside Congolese borders, as well as the absence of a vaccine or approved treatment against the specific strain. He noted that the current epidemic does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency at this time. 

The recent Ebola virus outbreak is occurring in an area of the country plagued by violence against civilians, which is linked to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, who continue to inflict suffering on the local population despite ongoing joint military efforts by the Congolese armed forces and the Ugandan Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF). In addition to the joint operations, various local militia groups are also active, including the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO), the Zaire faction, the Convention pour la Revolution Populaire (CRP), and others. This situation has deteriorated the humanitarian conditions in this region of the DRC, leading to a significant displacement of people.

However, the government of Rwanda, through its Ministry of Health, has said it is closely monitoring the resurgence of the Ebola epidemic in the DRC’s Ituri province, noting that no cases of the virus have been detected in Rwanda so far. The government noted that it has taken some measures, including increased vigilance on border posts with the DRC.

“As a precautionary measure, Rwanda has reinforced the testing and vigilance at entry points situated along the border with the DR Congo. Health teams have been mobilised, and the surveillance systems have been reinforced in order to ensure early detection and a rapid intervention in case of need”, the Rwanda Ministry of Health announced in a statement dated May 17.

Sabin Nsanzimana, the country’s Minister of Public Health, who is also an epidemiologist, noted that his ministry would continue to collaborate with national, regional, and international partners to protect the health and security of the Rwandan population.

The epidemic in Ituri province arose nearly six months after the Congolese government announced the end of the 16th Ebola epidemic in Kasai province on Dec. 1, 2025. Following the recovery of the last patient on Oct. 19, 2025, no cases were recorded during the subsequent 42 days.

However, Roger Kambathe, DRC’s Minister of Public Health, Hygiene, and Social Welfare, rejected speculations in the country’s socio-political circles that the resurgence of the Ebola virus is due to negligence on the part of relevant health infrastructure and authorities. During a press conference on Saturday, May 16, the minister addressed accusations of failure in the sanitary surveillance system to manage alerts about the new Ebola epidemic in Ituri.

“You have said something that surprises me. You have said: ‘What did not work, the epidemic has been here for one month and you did not react’. I want to remind you that there was a patient, a nurse, who died in Bunia of an illness which was not reported. I gave the date: 24th April,” the minister said, clarifying that the corpse was eventually transferred to Mungwalu, where local traditional funeral rites caused the propagation of the virus.

“It was during the funeral ceremony that people were crying, thinking that the nurse died from a mysterious disease and touching the corpse, that cases of the virus started appearing,” Roger noted, adding that the first official notification of the virus was on May 5. “This first social notification was through social networks.”

“Three days afterwards, our teams made the official notification. Samples were taken”, the minister continued and stressed that the first analysis did not permit the identification of the particular Ebola strain. “We first researched the Zaire strain, but the results were negative.”

He also said samples were eventually sent to the national biomedical research institute in Kinshasa for complementary analyses, “and it was before yesterday that we received the confirmation of another strain. Thus, I do not know why you say ‘what did not work?’”.

Samuel argued that “there is a rule called ‘7-1-7’: be alerted in 7 days, intervene immediately, and post the diagnosis promptly. And that is what was done”. He assured that response measures are currently in place, particularly through logistics and aerial resources. Between May 8 and May 17, aircraft were already dispatched. This spans just under nine days, and the minister stated that the issue does not lie with the system.

One day before the official government communication on May 16, Jean Kaseya, the Director General of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, warned of the high risk of regional spread of the epidemic. Faced with the situation, a high-level regional meeting was convened with the health authorities of the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan, as well as several international partners, including the WHO and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).

According to Jean, who is in charge of the African Union’s health agency, the efforts would be centred on strengthening epidemiological surveillance, laboratory capacities, infection control, community engagement, and transborder coordination.

In a related development, measures to fight against the virus are being intensified in Ituri province. At least five tons of medical supplies were sent to Bunia on Sunday, May 17, to support teams fighting the virus. The material arrived at Murongo airport aboard a humanitarian flight, coordinated by the WHO and its partners. On arrival in Bunia, Anne Ancia, WHO representative in DRC, confirmed that the logistical support aims to urgently reinforce response capacities in the zones affected by the epidemic. According to her, the situation requires rapid mobilisation and coordination to prevent the disease from spreading further in the province, which is already weakened by insecurity and population displacement.

“We call on the population to collaborate with the health teams, to rapidly report suspected cases and to respect preventive measures. The response cannot succeed without the involvement of the community”, Anne Ancia charged. The equipment, including individual protective gear, tents, and hospital beds, would enable intensified frontline interventions, strengthened prevention, and infection control to protect communities in the affected zones.

This medical assistance comes while several suspected cases and deaths linked to Ebola have been reported in certain health zones of Ituri, notably in Rwampara and Bunia, forcing the health authorities to reinforce the surveillance and prevention measures. On the ground, medical teams continue community sensitisation, follow-up contacts, and the installation of health control mechanisms to limit the chain of transmission.