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Ushar Daniele

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda is raising an uncomfortable question for Asian governments: could the virus travel through the region’s airports before health systems detect it?
While experts say the risk of a major outbreak in Asia remains low, the latest flare-up has renewed scrutiny of whether hospitals, contact tracers and border surveillance systems remain ready after years of post-Covid fatigue and strained global health funding.
Khoo Yoong Khean, deputy director of the Centre for Outbreak Preparedness and assistant professor at Duke-NUS Medical School, said there was “a low risk that Ebola will reach Asia”.
But he said the most likely route of introduction would be through international air travel or medical evacuation, making early detection more important than sweeping border restrictions.
Ebola is a severe and often fatal disease whose symptoms can take two to 21 days to appear, meaning infected travellers may move across borders before they become visibly ill.

The current outbreak in Africa involves the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, a rarer form for which no licensed vaccine or specific treatment exists, making early detection, isolation and supportive care especially important.
As of Tuesday, the DR Congo had reported 550 confirmed cases and 101 deaths, while Uganda had confirmed 19 cases and two deaths, largely among people who had crossed from the DR Congo. The outbreak was declared in the DR Congo on May 15.
Unlike respiratory viruses, Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids. According to Khoo, this makes transmission harder and improves the chances of early detection.
He said large urban populations could make containment harder if infection-control measures were weak or delayed, but this was not generally the case in Asia.
While high levels of migration and cross-border movement could complicate contact tracing and other public health measures, Khoo said the “priority is early detection rather than dramatic border restrictions”.
Governments should focus on border screening, recording travel history, infection control reviews, fast laboratory testing and isolation readiness, he added.
David Stiefel, director of global biological policy and programmes at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, agreed the likelihood of a large, prolonged outbreak in Asia was low, but major international airports in large cities increased the risk of travel-related cases.
“Until we see case detection and contact tracing improve, the magnitude of the risk remains unclear,” he said.

Those concerns have prompted a range of responses across Asia, including travel advisories, enhanced screening and mandatory quarantine for travellers from affected areas.
Singapore, which recorded more than 69.98 million passenger movements in 2025, is among the regional transport hubs taking a surveillance-led approach. Its Communicable Diseases Agency said on May 19 it was closely monitoring the outbreak and had stepped up precautionary public health measures.
“There are no direct flights from the DRC and Uganda to Singapore, and travel volume is low. Nevertheless, Singapore already has measures in place for the early detection and management of Ebola disease,” it said.
The agency has mandated that all medical practitioners and laboratories immediately notify it of confirmed and suspected Ebola cases, while Singapore’s Electronic Health Declaration card requires travellers to declare their health status and travel history.
“Travellers will be subject to medical assessments at points of entry if they present symptoms compatible with Ebola and have travelled to the affected areas.”
Elsewhere in Asia, India has advised citizens to avoid non-essential travel to the DR Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, while Japan has issued a lower-level infectious disease warning for the DR Congo and Uganda.
South Korea has adopted more active border-screening measures, with local media citing quarantine authorities as saying they would check mobile roaming history and entry-exit records to identify travellers who had visited high-risk areas.

In one of Southeast Asia’s tougher approaches, Thailand now requires travellers arriving from or transiting through the DR Congo and Uganda to enter only through Suvarnabhumi Airport and undergo isolation or quarantine for at least 21 days.
According to the Thai Department of Disease Control, asymptomatic travellers will quarantine in designated venues, while those showing symptoms will isolate in state medical facilities.
It warned that those who violated quarantine or isolation orders could face fines or imprisonment under Thailand’s Communicable Diseases Act.
Preparedness gaps
Stiefel said border measures were only one part of outbreak preparedness, and Southeast Asian nations’ serious response to Ebola should not obscure wider gaps in global readiness.
“Pandemic neglect has set in across many high-income countries, while access and benefit-sharing challenges persist,” he said, referring to waning investment and political attention after Covid-19, as well as disputes over fair access to vaccines, tests and treatments developed from shared pathogen samples and outbreak data.
That warning reflects a broader concern in global health circles: outbreak risks are rising faster than the systems designed to contain them.
In its 2026 report, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board said infectious disease outbreaks were becoming more frequent and damaging, while sustainable financing, public trust and equitable access to medical countermeasures remained persistent gaps.
That makes a uniform regional response difficult. Some countries’ immediate challenge may be airport screening and hospital isolation, while others could need stronger laboratory networks, faster data-sharing or clearer public communication to ensure people honestly report symptoms and travel history.
“What China or Singapore needs may not be the same as Cambodia or Laos,” Stiefel said.

Asean has sought to narrow some of those gaps through a stronger regional biosecurity architecture. In 2024, the regional bloc adopted a declaration on biosafety and biosecurity and agreed to establish a regional network to improve knowledge sharing and coordination.
Last year, Asean officials and partner countries met to work on the network’s action plan, including how members would cooperate to prevent, detect and respond to biological threats.
The challenge for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, however, is more basic in some places: ensuring that information from clinics, laboratories, border authorities and local health offices moves quickly enough for officials to spot a potential outbreak.
A 2022 Asean Socio-Cultural Community policy brief warned that regional disease surveillance was being held back by uneven health-system capacity and fragmented data collection.
In practical terms, that means suspected cases, laboratory results and local outbreak reports may sit in separate systems, slowing the process of identifying clusters and tracing contacts.
In Laos, for example, disease surveillance had improved, but outbreak data remained spread across different sources and recording systems, the brief said.
Malaysia, by contrast, had integrated several surveillance platforms, including eNotification for disease reporting, iDengue for dengue tracking, eWabak for outbreak management and a rumour-surveillance system designed to pick up early warning signs from informal reports.
Laboratory capacity presents another divide, and is especially important for Ebola because suspected cases must be tested quickly and safely before contact tracers can know whom to follow up.
“There is a massive disparity in laboratory capacity among Asean member states,” the report said.
Asean’s biosafety and biosecurity declaration was a positive step, Stiefel said, but its value would depend on whether implementation allowed countries to focus on their most relevant risks.


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A health worker dries gumboots and gloves under the sun at the Mulago National Referral Hospital isolation unit in Kampala, Uganda, on Monday, amid the Ebola outbreak. Photo: AFP

Villagers wash their hands as a preventive measure against Ebola after attending a church service in Rwanpara, Ituri, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on Sunday. Photo: EPA

Travellers arrive at Changi International Airport in Singapore in April 2022. The city state says it is closely monitoring the Ebola outbreak and has stepped up precautionary health measures. Photo: AFP

Travellers from international flights arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport in May. Thailand has ramped up Ebola screening measures in the wake of the outbreak in Africa. Photo: EPA

Southeast Asian leaders at the Asean summit in Cebu, the Philippines, on May 8. Asean has sought to build a stronger regional biosecurity architecture to boost outbreak preparedness. Photo: AP

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Aid workers set up an Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, DR Congo, on Tuesday. Photo: AP

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While the risk of Ebola reaching Asia is low, experts urge governments to prioritise early detection over border controls


While the risk of Ebola reaching Asia is low, experts urge governments to prioritise early detection over border controls.


Asia on Ebola alert: could virus slip through region’s defences?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While the risk of Ebola reaching Asia is low, experts urge governments to prioritise early detection over border controls

While the risk of Ebola reaching Asia is low, experts urge governments to prioritise early detection over border controls