Outbreak Watch: Line of Sight

It's Thursday night, June 18th, 2026, and I've decided to do an Outbreak Watch episode for you.

These episodes are intended to communicate meaningful change in ongoing biological events, or when outbreaks give us insight into a larger story that's worth paying attention to.

This week, both things happened.

Aside from important updates for Ebola, Hantavirus, and Screwworm, all three events seem to be circling the same question.

How much of the threat can we actually see? And as it turns out, the answer to that question often determines what happens next.

So tonight we're looking at three very different biological events unfolding at three very different points on the same timeline.

Over the last few weeks, we've been following two outbreaks in particular, the Bundabugio Ebola epidemic in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and the Andes hantavirus cluster linked to passengers aboard the expedition cruise ship MV Hondias.

Check out my episodes on both if you want deeper dives in those.

Both have continued to evolve, but not in the same direction.

The Ebola outbreak continues expanding under extraordinarily challenging conditions, and the hantavirus cluster is approaching the end of its monitoring period.

Then there's screwworm.

Unlike Ebola or hantavirus, screwworm isn't a virus, it's a parasite.

And while it isn't causing a human epidemic, new detections in the US are raising difficult questions about surveillance, preparedness, and what happens when a biological threat emerges and the response system has to be rebuilt.

Taken together, these three stories illustrate something important.

Outbreaks have life cycles.

They emerge, they expand, and they stabilize.

Sometimes they're contained before most people ever hear about them.

Sometimes they're not.

But they also reveal something about the systems built to find and stop them.

Tonight we're going to look at all three stages, one outbreak growing, one outbreak ending, and one emerging threat whose fate remains to be seen.

Together, they tell a larger story about surveillance, preparedness, and what happens when public health officials lose sight of a threat or struggle to see it clearly in the first place.

This is Outbreak Watch Line of Sight.