The head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that the risk of the Ebola outbreak spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda is high at the national and regional levels, but remains low globally.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that 51 cases have so far been confirmed in the eastern DR Congo provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, “although we know the scale of the epidemic is much larger.”

He added that Uganda had also notified the UN health agency of two confirmed cases in the capital, Kampala.

“Beyond the confirmed cases, there are almost 600 suspected cases and 139 probable deaths,” he said. “We expect those numbers to keep increasing.”

However, the Ebola outbreak in DR Congo does not currently meet the threshold for a pandemic or a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), according to the chair of the WHO emergency committee monitoring the situation.

“The current situation does not satisfy the criteria for a pandemic emergency,” Lucille Blumberg told reporters from South Africa.

The WHO said the spread of the virus in DR Congo suggests the outbreak likely began several months ago.

“Investigations are ongoing, and our priority is to cut the chain of transmission by implementing contact tracing, isolating cases, and caring for all suspected and confirmed patients,” Anais Legand, WHO technical officer on viral haemorrhagic fevers, told journalists.

Tedros also suggested on Wednesday that recent US criticism of the WHO’s response to the outbreak could stem from a “lack of understanding.”

Asked about comments by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who described the WHO response to the Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo as “a little late,” Tedros told reporters in Geneva that “maybe what the secretary said could be from a lack of understanding of how the International Health Regulations work, and the responsibilities of WHO and other entities.”

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