The hantavirus outbreak is over Tedros confirmed that the final contact of a person exposed to hantavirus aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius completed quarantine, tested negative, and returned home, with no further cases reported since May 25. The final tally: 13 confirmed cases and three deaths, with more than 650 contacts traced and monitored across 33 countries and territories. WHO isn't closing the file entirely the agency is coordinating a 21-country study to better understand how the disease develops, intended to support future diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. Tedros specifically thanked Argentina, Cabo Verde, Chile, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Spain for their role in the response, singling out Spain for supporting the safe disembarkation and repatriation of passengers and crew in Tenerife. Ebola keeps expanding, even as the response strengthens The numbers Tedros cited on July 2 1,406 confirmed cases and 438 deaths in the DRC, with an average of 38 new confirmed cases daily over the prior two weeks have already been overtaken by the outbreak's continued trajectory; AHM's earlier coverage of the $518 million continental response plan cited more than 2,300 cases and roughly 930 deaths by mid-July. What matters from the July 2 briefing is less the specific count than the response architecture built around it. Testing capacity has grown to 10 laboratories set up closer to affected communities. Contact tracing has improved to four in five contacts followed up, though officials say many more contacts still need to be identified per case. Treatment capacity has expanded to roughly 650 beds across 22 health centres already 96% occupied, with 300 more beds planned. A clinical trial of two therapeutics began the same day under the PARTNERS trial framework, and WHO issued emergency use listing for the first molecular diagnostic test specific to Bundibugyo virus a concrete answer to the diagnostics gap this outbreak exposed from the start. The response is not operating in a permissive environment. The same week as the briefing, an Ebola treatment centre in Ituri province was attacked and set on fire, killing two people and forcing patients to flee. Tedros condemned the violence directly, warning that attacks on health facilities endanger patients and responders while undermining transmission control. Days earlier, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher had made the same point more bluntly on social media: war makes fighting Ebola harder by blocking access, scattering contacts, and driving people into hiding out of fear and mistrust. A new coordinator, and a UN system-wide scale-up To manage that complexity, Tedros and Fletcher jointly endorsed Julien Harneis as Senior Ebola Coordinator in Kinshasa in late June a role Harneis takes on after previously serving as UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, giving him direct experience negotiating humanitarian access inside active conflict. The UN's Inter-Agency Standing Committee has since activated a System-Wide Scale-Up to control the outbreak, deploying Harneis to reinforce coordination across the response, address operational bottlenecks, and speed support to affected communities. By July 9, Fletcher was warning that the world needed to "move faster" as the virus spread beyond Ituri into other provinces, driven by the same conflict and displacement dynamics complicating the entire response. The World Food Programme, working alongside the health response, has supported more than 1.2 million people across 34 affected health zones in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu with food, nutrition and logistics support, and is separately seeking $72 million to sustain that operation. Separately, Uganda which had reported no new Ebola cases since June 21 confirmed a single case of Marburg virus disease in Kyegegwa District, detected through the same enhanced surveillance systems built for Ebola. All known contacts are being monitored, with WHO supporting investigations into the exposure source; none had shown symptoms as of the briefing. Tedros framed the concurrent hantavirus, Ebola and Marburg outbreaks together as proof that no country can manage threats like these alone. Venezuela: the same emergency machinery, a different continent The same briefing carried an update from Venezuela, where an earthquake the week prior had left more than 2,300 people dead, over 5,000 injured, and nearly 16,000 homeless. WHO has deployed Emergency Medical Teams, released $1.5 million from its Contingency Fund for Emergencies, and shipped more than six metric tons of medical supplies, with 28 more metric tons en route. Hospitals in La Guaira are reportedly buckling under the disaster's weight, with disease-outbreak risk in shelters rising quickly a reminder that WHO's emergency architecture is built to flex across simultaneous, unrelated crises on different continents, not just the outbreaks dominating African headlines. Why this connects to the diplomacy track Tedros used the briefing to point toward the following week's resumption of Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing negotiations under the WHO Pandemic Agreement the same seventh round of talks AHM has covered separately framing international cooperation as the throughline connecting outbreak response, humanitarian coordination and the treaty process still being negotiated. Whether that PABS annex, once finalized, changes how quickly diagnostics like the new Bundibugyo test reach affected communities in future outbreaks remains the open question this briefing leaves on the table. _Reporting sources: WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing, 2 July 2026; UN News (2 & 9 July 2026); Vanguard News; ANI; EnviroNews Nigeria._