Transcript: Dr. Deborah Birx on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” May 24, 2026

The following is the text of the interview with Dr. Deborah Birx aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on May 24, 2026.

NANCY CORDES: We now turn to the growing outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Joining us to discuss is former White House coronavirus coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, who also helped coordinate the international response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak when she was the Global AIDS Coordinator. Dr. Birx, thank you so much for having us.

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: Nice to have you, Nancy.

NANCY CORDES : Dr., The White House, the WHO rather, says that there are now almost 750 suspected cases in the Congo, around the Congo, and the death of almost 200 people. How does the severity of this situation compare to previous outbreaks?

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: Well, the problem with this particular outbreak is that there may have been two, three, or four cycles of infection before it was reported, so a lot of the numbers that you’re seeing, and the rapid increase in numbers, is because it was not seen and not properly reported for about three or four weeks. That led to a lot of cases being reported at once, so I can’t really tell you what the trend of new cases is, which is really important when you’re tracking a serious infectious disease, but to clarify for your audience, the people we’re seeing today are cases that may have been infected two weeks ago. And so I think that’s what worries us all, that we’re looking at this virus and this outbreak with really old data.

NANCY CORDES : I want to get to that delay in reporting the outbreak in a second, but we first saw this week that a flight from Paris to Detroit had to be diverted to Montreal after a Congolese person was mistakenly allowed to board. What do Americans need to know about this disease’s evolution and risks here at home? I think people are worried.

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: Well, when you see this level of outbreak, from COVID, I understand why people are concerned. But remember that the DRC has had 17 or 18 of these outbreaks in the last 20, 30 years, so this is normal, even though this is big. I think we have learned from COVID how we can be more effective in preventing this virus from coming into the country since we had those cases almost ten years ago. What we have done is really strengthen the hospitals. We now have bio containment facilities in many hospitals, so we are ready in case someone comes into the country. But it is important that we take action, as they did. And if you have a travel limit, you really have to enforce it. And what did they do when they diverted the plane.

NANCY CORDES: Is this travel ban the right answer? Congolese people—

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: The travel ban— (CROSSTALK)

NANCY CORDES: A few other countries can’t enter the US, even green card holders, if they’ve been in that place 21 days or more?

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: You know, I, it’s part of a broader response, which it is, and I don’t think it gets that much coverage, but within four days the US sent a DART team. Most of the USAID people who are no longer in the USAID building are now at the State Department and were part of the Ebola response, the 2014 response and the 2018 response. They are already on the ground. There is a CDC team that has been in Kinshasa, that is in Kinshasa permanently, it is responding, so if it is part of the response to the total funding, yes, not as one solution only.

NANCY CORDES: As you know, in the last year and a half, the Trump administration has largely disbanded USAID, withdrawn from the World Health Organization, cut funding to Congo and Uganda. Do you think those measures contributed to the delay in reporting this outbreak, and do they contribute to the lack of resources to deal with the outbreak of violence in the Congo?

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: Well, if I look at what the administration has done recently, I think they put in $50 or $100 million right away, and they’re sending people who are part of the answer. I think the big question for me is that most of us in the world community have invested a lot in building the African CDC for this reason, for this very answer. Hundreds of millions of dollars went into building the laboratory capacity of the DRC in the African CDC, and for some reason it did not succeed. And then what we need to do is to find out why we didn’t see this earlier, why the institutions that we all stood up as a global community did not effectively control this outbreak early, so that it does not spread as far as it did inside the DRC. I understand that it is a controversial area, but we have to do better. We owe it to the people of the DRC.

NANCY CORDES: I hear what you’re saying about the fact that money is now coming from the US to the region, but we’ve talked to aid workers in the region, who say that a lot of local programs were cut after the end of US aid—programs aimed at Ebola preparedness and response, and so they don’t have the same power that they had before.

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: I think that’s a very good question, and we need to really look at that. I know that the CDC’s global health security program has been saved, and much of that funding has been saved. I know we had people in Kinshasa as part of the CDC. If you look at Uganda’s funding—now I’m looking at it on the HIV side, which builds a lot of laboratory capacity—this year they got over $400 million so maybe there was a 5% cut, but I think the Americans thought these programs were cut. If you look at the MOUs of the agreements made by the US government, I’m actually convinced the numbers are there on paper.

NANCY CORDES: The US right now doesn’t have a certified head of the CDC, it doesn’t have a certified head of the FDA, it doesn’t have a certified Surgeon General. Is the US prepared to deal with an outbreak of Ebola or any other infectious disease, should it come to our shores.

DR. DEBORAH BIRX: I think that’s a great question, and watching how this plays out will be very important. And I look at that. They’ve already created an interagency Ebola response team, and just to reassure the American public, I was in the federal government for 40 years and the military for 29 years, there’s a deep bench. So, yes, it is important to have leaders of all these institutions. I think people are nominated at least for the CDC, so I think that’s very important. But we have a deep bench in a lot of these institutions, and really, I know them, they’re great people. I think this interagency response is already putting resources, people, and money down, and I think what we need, I keep coming back to the African CDC, because that should have been our first promoter of protective gear, of testing, of public work, and we just need to figure out how to strengthen that and more.

NANCY CORDES: I understand. Dr. Deborah Birx, thank you so much for being with us. Thanks for the content, we appreciate it. And we’ll be back in a second.