‘We’re working on it’: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Ebola, hantavirus response
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), during a healthcare affordability event in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, May 18, 2026. (Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told ABC News on Monday that his agency is working to address the recent hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks, marking the first time he’s commented publicly on the Ebola outbreak since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed than an American had been infected with the virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“Yeah, we’re working on it,” Kennedy told ABC News when asked if he was worried about the outbreaks. The secretary’s comments come after the CDC said a “small number of Americans” are directly affected by the current Ebola outbreak in the DRC.
Kennedy did not respond when asked what his message might be to Americans who are concerned about the diseases potentially spreading in America. He told reporters in the Oval Office last week that the U.S. had the hantavirus outbreak “under control.”
“We have this under control and we’re not worried about it,” he said at the White House’s maternal healthcare event on May 11th. Kennedy also noted that the CDC has been working on the outbreak since day one.
The CDC said there have been no confirmed hantavirus cases in the U.S. linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship and 18 passengers remain under observation at the University of Nebraska.
Meanwhile, Kennedy’s brief comments about the outbreaks came following a roundtable event announcing nearly $1 billion in new funding to states to address PFAS in drinking water at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday.
The secretary has been on a midterm blitz recently, touting the administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement during stops including Ohio and California.
At a subsequent event featuring Kennedy and other health leaders at the White House, Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy Heidi Overton stressed that “there are no cases of Ebola in America.”
Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy Heidi Overton stressed during the event that “there are no cases of Ebola in America.”
“We want to keep it that way and we are doing everything we can to support Americans in the region,” Overton added.
An air quality health advisory has been issued for New York City and the tri-state area due to high ozone levels, the National Weather Service announced on June 5, 2025, in United States. (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Nearly half of Americans — 152.3 million people — now live in places with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution (PM2.5), two of the most dangerous air pollutants.
The American Lung Association’s 2026 “State of the Air” report finds that more than 129 million people live in counties with failing grades for ozone pollution. This type of pollution forms when sunlight interacts with compounds emitted from cars, industry and chemicals, creating harmful ground-level ozone in the air.
About 62 million people live in counties with failing grades for daily particle pollution spikes, which consist of tiny particles in the air produced by sources like car exhaust, power plants, construction, fires and dust, according to the report.
Exposure to dirty air was not equal, the report found.
People of color were more than twice as likely to live in areas failing all major pollution measures, according to the report.
“[In] areas where people have fewer socioeconomic resources … there’s a snowball effect because many of these areas may have less access to healthy food, less safe places to work out outside and less access to health care,” Dr. Afif El-Hasan, a board-certified pulmonologist and an American Lung Association spokesperson, told ABC News.
Many of these areas with high pollution are also underserved areas or have lower socioeconomic means, El-Hasan said.
Breathing in contaminated air not only makes people sicker; it affects family dynamics, finances and just about every other aspect of life, the report’s authors say.
Children are disproportionately affected as well. About 33.5 million of them are living in counties that received failing grades for at least one major air pollutant.
“Children who grow up in areas with polluted air are going to have decreased lung development compared to children who grow up having been exposed to clean air,” El-Hasan said. “Ultimately that leads to adults who have lower lung capacity than they would otherwise have — and that’s not reversible.”
And because the pollution compromises the body’s defenses, infections like the cold, flu and even COVID may be more severe in people who live in high-pollution areas, the findings suggested.
Despite decades of progress under the Clean Air Act, which was signed into law in 1970, the report found that air pollution is intensifying in many parts of the country.
Ozone pollution has worsened and now affects more people than in the past.
Climate change helps drive this trend by fueling extreme heat, drought and wildfires, the study suggested. And, while particle pollution has shown slight improvements, it still exposes far more people than historic low levels seen in the mid-2010s.
If you live in a place with poor air quality, there are steps you can take to protect your health, according to the American Lung Association.
Limit time outdoors on poor air quality days and check daily conditions. Use a high-quality mask like an N95 respirator and keep indoor air clean with filtration when pollution levels are high. Exercise indoors on bad air quality days.
Studies have also shown that staying up to date on vaccines, including flu and COVID shots, can also offer some protection.
Additionally, it’s critical the U.S. maintains the gains it has made on air quality over decades of stronger public health policies, El-Hasan said.
“Air does not respect borders — it will go everywhere,” El-Hasan said. “People should understand that what they do in terms of making sure policies are protecting air locally — it doesn’t just help you. If we are all helping keep our local air clean, it will help the rest of the nation as well.”
Grace Hagan M.D., is an internal medicine resident at Mayo Clinic and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
Health supplies are seen as healthcare workers receive training on administering the Ebola vaccine in a study carried out with the support of the World Health Organization as part of the fight against the Ebola virus in Kampala, Uganda on February 14, 2025. (Nicholas Kajoba/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A deadly Ebola outbreak is continuing to spread in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, with officials on Tuesday saying there were more than 600 confirmed and suspected cases and more than 100 suspected deaths.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, and at least one American in the DRC has tested positive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Several public health experts told ABC News that while they agree with the CDC that the risk to the U.S. public is currently low, the outbreak is still concerning. They also expressed unease that the U.S. may not be prepared to adequately respond due to cuts to federal health agencies and its withdrawal from the WHO.
The experts noted cases have been found in remote regions of the DRC and Uganda, as well as urban areas, and the outbreak is growing rapidly. They added that although Ebola is a rare disease, it can be highly contagious and can lead to deadly consequences.
“We’re worried that if this outbreak is not contained, that it could spread elsewhere on the continent, which could increase the risk of the virus spreading outside of the African continent,” Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, told ABC News.
“Ebola is not as transmissible a virus as, say, a coronavirus … and that’s why I don’t think that this will ever become a pandemic scenario, but it doesn’t have to be a pandemic to be a worrisome situation,” she added.
Americans affected by outbreak
On Monday, the CDC confirmed that least one American in the DRC contracted Ebola while working in the country.
Dr. Satish K. Pillai, incident manager for the CDC’s Ebola response, told reporters that the individual developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive late Sunday, adding that the patient and six other high-risk contacts were being moved to Germany for care and monitoring.
Serge, an international Christian missions organization, confirmed the patient is American medical missionary Dr. Peter Stafford, a board-certified general surgeon with a specialization in burn care, who was serving patients in the eastern DRC.
Pillai did not say if or when the Americans would be returning to the U.S., but experts say, even if the patient and contacts do, the risk level to the public does not change.
“We safely and effectively have [returned affected Americans home] many times before,” Emily Smith, interim chair of the department of global health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, told ABC News. “It’s something we have good experience in and have always safely and effectively done. So, to me, no concerns about doing that.”
Dr. Jesse Goodman, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at Georgetown University and former chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration, said it is encouraging that when countries such as the DRC have experienced outbreaks in the past, they have not progressed to pandemic status.
“I think the most [the U.S.] would see is the kind of limited transmission that we’ve seen in the past because this virus almost always appears that transmission is from people who have symptoms,” he told ABC News. “I think if there are cases that come to this country, I would expect limited transmission and think we have the capability to contain it.”
During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, there were two cases of suspected transmission from a patient with Ebola to nurses caring for him. The CDC has established detailed infection prevention and control procedures for health facilities that suspect they have cases of Ebola.
U.S. may not be as connected to the global health community
Even with possible U.S. capability to contain Ebola domestically, the experts who spoke to ABC News said the U.S. is likely at a disadvantage when it comes to responding to several health crises both at home and abroad due to public health capacity cuts.
Last year, the State Department announced it would be taking over programs previously run by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency — which oversaw foreign aid, disaster relief and international development programs — would no longer be providing assistance to other countries.
In previous Ebola outbreaks, USAID provided millions of dollars and operational support in response, in addition to helping with preparedness activities in neighboring countries.
Additionally, earlier this year, the U.S. officially completed its withdrawal from the WHO, with federal officials saying at the time there are “plans” in place to work with organizations on surveillance, diagnostics and outbreak response to fill in gaps left by exiting the WHO.
Brown University’s Nuzzo said the Ebola outbreak is the kind of situation public health experts warned about as USAID was gutted and the U.S. withdrew from the WHO.
“We warned that the United States would be flying blind, and it would be learning about deadly outbreaks late, and then it would be very difficult for the U.S. to respond because we would have fewer tools to do that,'” Nuzzo said. “The big worry here is that the outbreak wasn’t declared until there were more than 200 suspected cases of the virus and that is very unusual. Usually, we get signals of an outbreak much earlier.”
George Washington University’s Smith concurred, “When we are talking about public health infrastructure and global health infrastructure, we’re in a worse place today than we were two years ago.”
Nuzzo also noted that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an agency within the National Institutes of Health, ended research at its high containment lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, due to “a safety stand-down” last year.
The lab was one of the few federal facilities studying Ebola and other deadly pathogens, which Nuzzo said could have been useful in understanding the virus and developing therapies for the recent outbreak.
“So now that we have Americans potentially exposed to a virus that’s deadly, for which we have no vaccines or treatments, you can imagine how beneficial it would be to have a laboratory that can conduct world-class research to make sure we develop cures for this,” Nuzzo said. “But we don’t have it. So, we’re basically behind the curve in being ready for this.”
Goodman also said that the U.S. may not be as prepared because Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been actively shifting the department’s focus away from infectious disease management and towards chronic illnesses.
During his confirmation hearings last year, Kennedy argued that too much federal funding has been “devoted” to “infectious disease and to drug development and very little to chronic diseases.”
Goodman argued that there needs to be a focus on infectious diseases because of the threats they may pose to public health.
“I think the message here is these infectious disease, we may be done with them, but they’re not done with us,” he said. “There’s a reason that so many of us work for so many years to be prepared for whatever the next thing is because we don’t know what it is and we just need to be ready.”
Kennedy told ABC News on Monday that his agency is addressing the recent hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks.
“Yeah, we’re working on it,” Kennedy replied when asked if he was worried about the outbreaks. Kennedy did not respond when asked what his message might be to Americans who are concerned about the diseases potentially spreading in the U.S.
On Sunday, the State Department issued “Level 4 — Do not travel” advisories for Uganda and the DRC due to the outbreak.
Nuzzo said she’s worried that the U.S. hasn’t built a public health system that acknowledges viral outbreaks as recurring threats, saying the U.S. has been caught off guard with previous incidents such as COVID-19.
“We don’t do that with other recurring hazards you know; we don’t try to build FEMA in the midst of a hurricane,” Nuzzo said.
Signage outside the Center for Disease Control (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (Megan Varner/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Cigarette smoking among U.S. adults continues to fall to record low levels as e-cigarette use rises, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published early Thursday.
Nearly 10% of adults in the U.S. smoked cigarettes in 2024, the report found. This is down from about 11% in 2023, CDC data shows.
Rates of cigarette use have dramatically fallen since a landmark 1964 Surgeon General report warned about the dangers of cigarette smoking and linked it to lung cancer, chronic bronchitis and other serious diseases.
The 1964 report also found a 70% higher mortality rate among smokers and helped launch a nationwide anti-smoking campaign.
At the time, more than 42% of adult Americans were smokers, according to the Surgeon General.
“Decreased cigarette use is certainly in line with decades of trends and really hard work on the part of public health and education folks to get the word out about how awful cigarettes are and how deadly they are,” Dr. Maria Rahmandar, medical director of the substance use & prevention program in the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, told ABC News.
“However, with decreased cigarette use, that means that big tobacco companies are losing money, and so they’re always looking for new ways to capture customers and hook new people on powerfully addictive … nicotine,” she added.
The new CDC report found those living in rural areas were more likely to smoke more than city dwellers. More than 15% of those in non-metropolitan areas smoked cigarettes compared to those living in cities, the report noted.
Meanwhile, the report found that 7% of American adults used e-cigarettes, or vapes, in 2024.
This is a slight uptick from 6.5% of adults reporting e-cigarette use in 2023 and nearly double from the 3.7% of adults who reported using e-cigarettes in 2020, CDC data shows.
“I think we had a shot [at] the first tobacco‑free generation prior to e‑cigarettes coming onto the market. Unfortunately, it’s kind of derailed that progress,” Thomas Carr, director of national policy at the American Lung Association, told ABC News.
The report found that vaping patterns were similar to cigarettes by metro areas, where 6.1% reported using e-cigarettes compared to 9.2% in rural areas.
Previous CDC data found that men; those who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual; and those who report serious psychological distress are more likely to report current e-cigarette use.
The CDC has also previously found that some adults use e-cigarettes to try to quit smoking cigarettes. The health agency notes the Food and Drug Administration has not approved any e-cigarette to help people quit smoking.
Rahmandar said e-cigarettes have been marketed as a way for people to get off cigarettes, which she noted can help. But she cautioned that there are still many unknowns about e-cigarette harms.
“Cigarettes are terrible, and it is possible that e‑cigarettes are safer — not safe — safer than cigarettes,” she said. “So could it be better for somebody to switch that in a harm reduction philosophy? Yes, however, we still don’t know long term effects of e‑cigarettes, either … We know that there are immediate effects. There certainly are harmful chemicals, carcinogens, toxins, heavy metals, respiratory irritants and other things inside of there that certainly can cause immediate harm.”
By age, those between age 45 and 64 were most likely to be smokers followed by those between ages 25 and 44.
Among vapers, those between ages 18 and 24 had the highest prevalence of e-cigarette use followed by those between ages 25 and 44.
Previous CDC data has shown that the majority of young adults who use e-cigarettes have never smoked cigarettes.
“I think this is … the JUUL generation,” Carr said, referencing what was the most popular e-cigarette in the U.S. “From 2017 to 2019, they got teens to get hooked on JUUL, and they’re now adults, and unfortunately, they haven’t been able to quit using e-cigarettes.”
Tiffany Le, MD, is a pediatrics resident at UT Southwestern Medical Center and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
ABC News’ Liz Neporent contributed to this report.
