This week’s edition leads with the alarming trajectory of the Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, now the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record and spreading faster than any previous outbreak, as WHO’s IHR Emergency Committee calls for an urgent operational reset. We also examine a major new analysis of how AI-generated disinformation is reshaping the CBRN threat landscape, and a Washington Post investigation into how the Trump administration’s biosecurity staffing cuts have left critical policy gaps even as AI-enabled biological risks accelerate.
FEATURED
WHO Says DRC’s Ebola Outbreak Remains a Global Health Emergency, Warns Response Must Intensify
The WHO’s IHR Emergency Committee met for a second time on 18 August and concluded that the Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo still constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), though not yet a pandemic emergency. The Committee estimated roughly 5,000 confirmed cases as of the meeting, with modelling suggesting the true toll could be three to four times higher, and warned the epidemic risks surpassing the 2013 to 2016 West Africa outbreak without a rapid change in trajectory. It called for an immediate, unified, and fully resourced intensification of the response under DRC government leadership, consolidated into a single costed national action plan. World Health Organization
How Will the White House Prepare for New Strains of Deadly Viruses After Cutting Biosecurity Experts?
The Washington Post reports that the White House’s dedicated biological security staff, once as large as 30 people under the Biden administration, has dwindled to a small revolving cast of aides, including a junior fellow without a security clearance, even as officials increasingly worry that artificial intelligence could make it easier to build dangerous pathogens. A 2024 policy requiring companies to screen genetic synthesis orders for bioweapons risk was due for revision by August 2025, but more than a year later no replacement has appeared. Former officials say the staffing losses have left the government without the expertise to develop policy with staying power, even as AI firms including OpenAI and Anthropic brief the administration on their systems’ growing biological capabilities. Washington Post
NIH Ends Key Clinical Trial Training Grant, and Critics Warn of a Decade-Long Talent Gap
NIH will no longer allow K career-development awards, which fund early-career researchers on their path to becoming independent investigators, to directly finance clinical trials, phasing out the mechanism for funding announcements that expire by July 2027. Roughly 90 K awards are made each year, and an analysis by former NIH official Jeremy Berg found recipients who ran trials were twice as likely to later win an R01 grant for one as other K awardees, complicating the agency’s rationale that the awards funded underpowered studies. A companion Clinical Trial Vanguard analysis finds the change affects nearly half of all active K23 awards, the mechanism most used by patient-oriented clinical researchers, and warns it will disproportionately squeeze investigators at less-resourced institutions out of trial leadership training. Science
POLICY + GOVERNMENT
NIH Plan to Keep Peer-Review Scores for Grants Secret Draws Concern
NIH announced on 14 August it will stop releasing numerical peer-review scores to grant applicants, instead sorting proposals into three tiers, most competitive, competitive, and not discussed, as part of Director Jay Bhattacharya’s push to end strict funding paylines. Critics including microbiologist Ferric Fang warn the change could obscure the influence of a separate OMB proposal giving political appointees new authority to override peer review in funding decisions. Science
‘Often Flying Blind’: Up to $246 Million of Taxpayer-Funded CDC Programs Are Largely Unstaffed
Up to $246 million in congressionally appropriated CDC programs — including the Office on Smoking and Health, an Alzheimer’s disease surveillance initiative, an $18 million tribal overdose prevention program, and the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System — remain legally funded but functionally inoperative after the Trump administration’s 2025 mass layoffs eliminated the staff responsible for running them. Current and former CDC employees, alongside advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers, describe the situation as a violation of the Impoundment Control Act, while union officials report little meaningful rehiring has taken place despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s pledge to hire 12,000 federal health workers. Fortune
MEDICAL COUNTERMEASURES
The Need for Speed: Liverpool’s Research-Led Response to the Andes Hantavirus Outbreak
Marking the 100-day mark since WHO declared the Andes hantavirus outbreak, The Pandemic Institute describes how Liverpool researchers activated a pre-approved clinical protocol within days, recruiting 33 contacts and cases while supporting the outbreak’s first use of the antiviral favipiravir for treatment and post-exposure prophylaxis. The drug reached the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Canada within 24 hours of requests from national health authorities. The Pandemic Institute
FDA Issues Emergency Use Authorization for Generic Drug to Prevent New World Screwworm in Cattle
The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for Bimectin, a generic ivermectin injection, to prevent New World screwworm infestations in cattle when given within 24 hours of birth, at castration, or when a wound appears. The agency said authorizing a generic alongside the existing Ivomec product ensures producers are not dependent on a single manufacturer to protect their herds. FDA
BIOSECURITY + BIOPREPAREDNESS
Massive New Animal Disease Lab in Kansas Runs Into More Delays
A USDA Inspector General report finds the $1.25 billion National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Kansas still cannot handle its highest-risk target pathogens three years after opening, faulting the Department of Homeland Security for design flaws including room seals and air pressure issues. USDA aims to fix the BSL-3 problems by spring 2027 for $78 million but has no timeline for the BSL-4 upgrades needed to replace capacity lost when Plum Island’s lab closed in 2025. Science
Biosecurity’s Blind Spot
Writing in Think Global Health, the author traces how a 2022 building-code complaint led investigators to an unregistered California warehouse lab holding roughly 1,000 genetically modified mice and agents including HIV, tuberculosis, and SARS-CoV-2. Operator Jia Bei Zhu was convicted in May 2026 on fraud charges, and the piece calls for broadened biological facility registration and dedicated state-level assessment teams to close the gap that let the lab operate undetected for years. Think Global Health
Mirror Life Is a Mass-Extinction Risk We Don’t Need to Take
In an opinion piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the author argues that mirror life, organisms built from molecules with reversed chirality that would evade natural predators and immune defenses, poses a mass-extinction risk that outweighs any potential medical benefit. No regulatory body currently governs the field, and the author calls for creating mirror life to be strictly prohibited, while noting RAND has proposed a US-China transparency agreement to keep the research from becoming a geopolitical race. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
DRC EBOLA OUTBREAK
DRC’s Ebola Outbreak Grows to 60 Health Zones as Uganda’s Outbreak Ends and New Vaccine Funding Arrives
The DRC’s Bundibugyo virus outbreak has spread to 60 of the country’s 151 health zones and now totals 5,794 confirmed cases and 2,786 deaths, with newly affected areas in North Kivu reporting case fatality rates as high as 69 percent, AP News reports. Uganda’s linked outbreak was declared over on 27 August after 42 days without a new case, and CEPI announced funding for a fifth Bundibugyo-specific vaccine candidate as the UN’s humanitarian appeal remains only 48 percent funded. AP News
Overcrowded Ebola Treatment Centers Are Fueling Transmission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
A Nature Medicine analysis argues that overcrowded Ebola treatment centers, some operating at more than 270 percent of capacity in Ituri province, are directly fueling transmission by compromising infection control and delaying isolation of suspected cases. The authors call treatment capacity an epidemiological intervention in its own right and urge rapid deployment of modular isolation units and transparent daily reporting on available beds to break the cycle. Nature Medicine
AVIAN INFLUENZA
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Update
Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture reports one poultry and six livestock HPAI detections nationally over the past 30 days, while the state itself maintains Unaffected State Status under USDA’s National Milk Testing Strategy after testing more than 55,000 milk samples. As a result, lactating dairy cattle moving interstate from Wisconsin are no longer subject to federal pre-movement HPAI testing requirements. Wisconsin DATCP
ENVIRONMENTAL FLUX
Rare South American Diseases Offer Clues on the Next Pandemic
The New York Times reports that Argentine hemorrhagic fever, a rare rodent-borne disease once confined to rural male farm workers, is resurging and spreading into cities such as Rosario, with cases roughly tripling between 2017 and 2022 and recent outbreaks killing at least nine people. Researchers attribute the shift to climate change and land-use expansion pushing disease-carrying rodents into new areas, part of a broader pattern in which the CDC estimates roughly three-quarters of emerging human infectious diseases originate in animals. The New York Times
AI + CYBERBIOSECURITY
Rethinking the De-Skilling Narrative in AI and Biological Weapons Policy
Biodefense scholar Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley challenges the widely cited claim that AI is de-skilling bioweapons development, arguing that historical programs including Soviet anthrax and smallpox efforts were constrained far more by tacit knowledge and system integration than by access to written protocols. She recommends that policy target expertise acquisition and integration bottlenecks, through tools such as export controls and a reinforced Biological Weapons Convention verification mechanism, rather than defaulting to regulating the technology itself. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
INFODEMIC + DISINFORMATION
The Security Implications of AI-Generated CBRN Disinformation
A new study examines how AI-generated images, fabricated documents, and deepfake video eroded trust and complicated attribution during the May 2025 India-Pakistan crisis, including a fabricated video of a senior Pakistani military spokesman and a false claim of a radiation leak at a nuclear site. The authors recommend pairing AI-enhanced predictive monitoring with human-in-the-loop verification and systematic red-teaming of public-facing AI models to counter CBRN information disorder. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism
SPECIAL INTEREST
Inside the National Quarantine Unit: Preparedness, Partnership, and People
A new episode of NETEC’s Transmission Interrupted podcast profiles the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the country’s only dedicated 20-bed quarantine facility, tracing its origins to lessons from the Ebola and COVID-19 responses. The team describes individual negative-pressure rooms, concierge-level patient support, and quarterly training exercises that let staff adapt quickly to each new pathogen threat. NETEC
OPPORTUNITIES
Call for Experts: Third Cohort of the Pandemic Fund Technical Advisory Panel
The Pandemic Fund is recruiting experts in pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response for a two-year Technical Advisory Panel term running January 2027 through December 2028, requiring about 25 working days per year to review funding proposals and advise its Governing Board. Applications, submitted online with a CV, are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern on 18 September 2026. The Pandemic Fund
Join the Preparedness Policy Advisory Group
NACCHO is seeking mid-level to senior local health department preparedness professionals to join its Preparedness Policy Advisory Group, which meets monthly to provide coordinated local input on federal preparedness policy, with openings currently listed in 25 states plus Chicago and Washington, D.C. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, with new members selected monthly. NACCHO
This content was researched and sourced by Global Biodefense editors and reported with Claude AI assistance for drafting and editing.