India has made a stealth switch amidst the Ebola virus outbreak. Millions of UAE commuters will notice when they start boarding their flights back home on June 25, 2026. Air Suvidha 2.0, a mandatory portal for digital health self-declaration for all international passengers before boarding flights to India has been opened by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in India.
It will fill a form they completed hundreds of times throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. One they never expected to see again. For the UAE’s biggest expatriate population – the Indian community – the form is made necessary for their travel home.
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That’s not Covid this time, however. This is the Ebola virus outbreak. And it started in a mining town in eastern Congo in February, months before anyone in the world knew to look for it.
The Outbreak Nobody Caught in Time
Early infections are believed to have happened in the town of Mongbwalu in the Ituri Province of DRC. It happened during an ethnic conflict and population migration driven by mining that raged through the region. The virus quietly circulated among the informal health care networks in an area with weak coverage of formal health systems.
A possible Ebola virus outbreak signal was reported on 30th April. Initial testing in Bunia being negative for Zaire Ebola. A sample was taken to the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa. On May 5, WHO was notified and sent a response team.
Eight of 13 samples taken from areas of severe cases and deaths were found to test positive for Bundibugyo virus disease when analysed in the lab on May 15. These samples were from the Mongbwalu and Rwampara health zones in Ituri Province. Patients had presented with fever, generalized body pain, weakness, vomiting, and in some cases, bleeding. Several deteriorated rapidly and died.
That same day, Uganda declared an Ebola virus outbreak. It confirmed an imported case in an elderly man admitted to a private hospital in Kampala on May 11. He died on May 14, and his body was returned to DRC the following day.
By May 16, cases were not only appearing in Ituri. But also in the DRC capital Kinshasa, in Goma, in Butembo, and in Kampala. The outbreak had already gone intercontinental before the world had begun to react.
This Ebola Virus Outbreak Changes the Equation
There are currently Ebola vaccines, such as Ervebo vaccine and Mvabea-Zabdeno vaccine, that are against the Zaire strain. The Bundibugyo virus has only been responsible for two outbreaks before. It is named after one that was in Uganda in 2007. In 2012, a second Ebola virus outbreak occurred in Ituri Province. The mortality rate ranged from 25 to 50 percent. No known vaccine or treatment is available.
A study on macaques indicates that Ervebo can partially be effective. However, this evidence is not enough. According to the WHO, it is not recommended to be used during the current outbreak.
This involves all containment strategies being based on measures which do not involve a syringe: rapid containment of cases, strict contact-tracing, and movement control at borders. Only 20 percent of contacts are being tracked in Ituri, where over two million people are IDPs between the DRC army and rebel groups.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has expressed concerns that the Ebola outbreak is probably much bigger. It is more advanced than reported.
Ebola Virus Outbreak: How Far Has It Spread?
The numbers as of June 26, 2026, are stark. The DRC Ministry of Health reported a total of 1,118 confirmed cases including 291 confirmed deaths, with 408 individuals hospitalised in isolation, as of June 23. Ituri Province accounts for 1,020 confirmed cases from 22 health zones. North Kivu has 95 confirmed cases from 11 health zones.
Outside DRC, the virus has appeared in three countries on two continents, all through travel or healthcare worker exposure. Uganda has confirmed 19 cases and two deaths, all traced to DRC imports, with no sustained local community transmission.
An American missionary doctor, Peter Stafford had worked at Nyankunde Hospital in eastern DRC since 2019. He contracted Bundibugyo virus while treating Ebola patients. Then he was airlifted to Berlin’s Charité hospital on May 19, the first Ebola evacuation to Europe in this Ebola virus outbreak.
On June 24, France confirmed its first case. A doctor who had been in the DRC on a humanitarian mission and returned to France. Both European cases were imported directly from the outbreak zone in DRC.
What WHO Has Said and What It Is Doing
The Ebola disease for which the causative agent is Bundibugyo virus in the DRC and Uganda has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 17 May 2026, marking the 8th Public Health Emergency of International Concern since the dawn of the modern IHR framework in 2005.
Dr. Tedros told reporters the outbreak of Ebola is spreading quickly and health officials are still falling behind. “We must prevent the outbreak from spreading, assist countries fighting the spread today, and make sure countries around us are ready to respond rapidly and effectively in case of a spread,” he said. “It is a serious outbreak and one which we know how to prevent, but, again, we must act quickly and collectively,” he added.
The financial response followed the declaration. The WHO and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention jointly launched a USD 518 million plan to battle the outbreak over the next six months, focusing on boosting surveillance, laboratory testing, and infection prevention. A mobile laboratory has been deployed near Kasese, close to the DRC-Uganda border, with virtual diagnostics coordination supporting cross-country laboratory operations.
However, Dr. Tedros has also pushed back forcefully against the global rush to close borders. “When a nation bravely reports a public health emergency, transparency should be rewarded, not punished with economic devastation and international isolation,” he said, condemning travel bans on Uganda as counterproductive.
Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of Africa CDC, was still blunter. “We cannot stop an outbreak with travel restrictions that Western countries choose to impose on African nations,” he said.
Ebola Virus Outbreak: How the World Responded
The WHO’s warnings did not stop governments from acting on their own terms. The restrictions that followed the PHEIC declaration form one of the most extensive chains of travel-related responses since the Covid pandemic.
The United States was among the first major nations to move. Under an order effective May 18, 2026, amended May 22, certain non-US citizens and lawful permanent residents present in DRC, Uganda, or South Sudan within the past 21 days were barred from entering. Those permitted to travel were required to route through Washington Dulles, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, or Houston Bush for enhanced Ebola screening.
Jordan suspended entry for travellers arriving from DRC and Uganda on May 19, with Jordanian citizens exempt. Bahrain, on the same day, suspended entry for all non-Bahraini nationals who had visited DRC, Uganda, or South Sudan in the past 30 days, with Bahraini citizens subject to health protocols.
Canada suspended Canadian immigration documents for residents of DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan for 90 days beginning May 27. From May 30, travellers from affected areas entering Canada were required to quarantine for 21 days.
Uganda itself moved against its own cross-border movement. The Ugandan Ministry of Health prohibited all direct flights entering and leaving DRC, and all cross-border bus and boat crossings to come into effect for four weeks.
The weekly markets in border districts were suspended, but sales of freight and essential goods were allowed to continue. Later, Bunia Airport, the primary entry point to Ituri was temporarily closed and re-opened with increased health screening measures.
As of June, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritius, Thailand, the Bahamas, Rwanda, Canada, Kenya, Tanzania, Singapore and Mexico had all tightened up restrictions, from bans to required testing and quarantine periods of up to 21 days.
Ebola Virus Outbreak: The UAE’s Escalating Response
The UAE took gradual and measured steps, each one is tailored to the changing dynamics. The UAE on May 31 issued a travel advisory for DRC, Uganda and South Sudan, saying nationals and residents should not travel there unless they have a compelling reason to do so, and that those already in the affected countries should register in the “Twajudi” travel advisory tracking service and also adhere to the country’s health advice.
On June 6, the UAE then stopped issuing new visas except visit visas for citizens of DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan. Exceptions applied for travellers who had spent 21 or more days outside the affected countries. Cargo flights and transit flight operations continued.
The UAE Ministry of Health confirmed that no Ebola cases had been detected in the UAE and that the country’s public health situation remained stable, emphasising that the measures were precautionary in nature and not a response to any domestic case.
Air Suvidha 2.0: What UAE Residents Travelling to India Must Do
Now India has added its own layer, one that directly touches the UAE’s 3.5 million Indian residents. The Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation, in collaboration with Delhi International Airport Limited, launched Air Suvidha 2.0 on June 25, an upgraded and fully contactless Passenger Health Self-Declaration Portal aimed at enhancing public health surveillance at international points of entry.
The portal requires all international arriving passengers to submit a mandatory online health self-declaration covering their 21-day travel history, exposure history, and related symptoms, prior to immigration clearance. The Self-Declaration Form can be completed within 24 hours before the start of the journey.
Passengers are requested to fill it before boarding, preferably during web check-in, to allow for faster clearance on arrival. They are only required to show the downloaded form at the International Travel Health Desk or Immigration counter, with no physical forms to fill out on landing.
For millions of UAE residents who travelled to India through the Covid pandemic years, the Air Suvidha form will bring back a familiar, if unwelcome, memory. India’s government originally introduced the Air Suvidha portal during the pandemic, scrapping it in November 2022 as the public health situation improved. It has now been reactivated, this time in response to Ebola rather than Covid.
The upgraded platform enables real-time data sharing with the Airport Health Officer, Bureau of Immigration, the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme, and State Surveillance Officers, allowing swift identification and referral of at-risk travellers while keeping the arrival experience contactless.
Ebola Virus Outbreak: The Debate Behind the Response
Not everyone believes the cascade of travel restrictions is solving the right problem. Uganda’s own health authorities have noted that not a single community case originating from within Uganda has been registered. Every confirmed Ugandan case has been either directly imported from DRC or involved a caregiver with direct unprotected contact with an infected individual. The outbreak in Uganda is, by epidemiological standards, surgically contained.
The WHO’s concern is that sweeping restrictions punish countries for transparent reporting and create incentives for future outbreaks to go unreported. That incentive structure, if it takes hold, makes the next pandemic harder to detect, not easier.
Anaïs Legand of WHO’s high-threat pathogens team put the stakes in context. “It’s huge,” she said of the Bundibugyo case fatality rate. “It means that up to five out of 10 people are likely to die.” The virus is genuinely dangerous. The question is whether borders or biology will decide how far it goes.
For now, anyone flying from Dubai to Delhi fills in a form. It takes two minutes. And may catch nothing at all. It may, in some small and untrackable way, catch something that matters. That is the tension that every public health response to an outbreak like this lives in, between the cost of doing too much and the cost of doing too little, with the answer only visible in hindsight.
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