Fall in official Ebola numbers appears to be good news but it's not that simple

Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Tedros said that earlier this year he had urged foreign ministers planning to increase defence spending not to forget about the "invisible enemy". He said the Covid pandemic had resulted in around 20 million deaths - far more than any recent conflict. However, he stressed that he did not expect Ebola to spread worldwide because the virus is not airborne, unlike coronavirus. The WHO assesses the risk from Ebola as very high within DR Congo - this is the 17th outbreak in the country where it was first discovered 50 years ago - high in the region, but low globally.On Friday, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said its model scenarios showed that without strong public health intervention the current outbreak could become as large - or even larger - than the outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16.Separately, the US said it would provide an additional $38m (£28m) for Ebola "response efforts", bringing the total direct funding to more than $200m.Earlier this week British government officials said they had ruled out introducing temperature checks at UK airports for flights arriving from affected regions because of their limited effectiveness. More than 12,000 passengers were screened at five UK airports during the 2014 outbreak in West Africa, but these failed to pick up the only case, that of nurse Pauline Cafferkey.