WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu indicated on 15 August that the outbreak then in the DRC might be worse than the West African outbreak of 2013–2016, with the IRC connecting this to the ongoing Kivu conflict. The Kivu outbreak was the biggest of the ten recorded outbreaks recorded in the DRC.The first confirmed case in Butembo was announced on 4 September, the same day that it was announced that one of the cases registered at Beni had actually come from the Kalunguta Health Zone.