United States President Donald Trump speaks during an event on health care affordability in the South Court Auditorium of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 18, 2026.
Kent Nishimura | AFP | fake images
President Donald Trump said Monday he was worried about Ebola after an American tested positive.
“I'm worried about everything, but certainly [I] “Am,” Trump said when asked about Ebola during a White House event on his administration's consumer drug website, TrumpRx.
“I think at this point it's been limited to Africa, but it's something that has had an outbreak,” he said of the disease.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced early Monday that an American tested positive for Ebola while in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A day earlier, the World Health Organization declared that the spread of the Ebola virus, known as Bundibugyo, which is currently emerging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, constitutes a global public health emergency.
The WHO specified that “it does not meet the pandemic emergency criteria,” as defined in the International Health Regulations.
In 2014, when an Ebola outbreak occurred during Barack Obama's presidency, Trump repeatedly criticized Obama on social media for his handling of the spread.
The American who tested positive developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive on Sunday night, Dr. Satish Pillai, the CDC's Ebola response incident manager, told reporters in a call.
“We have advocated for a comprehensive interagency response” to the outbreak, Heidi Overton, a doctor who was appointed in 2025 to Trump's Domestic Policy Council, said at an event at the White House on Monday afternoon.
Overton confirmed that one American is symptomatic and said that person, “as well as six other high-risk contacts, will be removed from that region and brought to Germany.”
“At this time, there are no cases of Ebola in the United States. We want to keep it that way and we are doing everything we can to support Americans in the region,” he added.
