Fact Check– John Kerry: The Obama Administration Stopped Ebola Before It Became a Pandemic

CLAIM: Former Secretary of State John Kerry claimed Tuesday during the Democratic National Convention that the Obama administration stopped the Ebola virus before it became a pandemic.

VERDICT: Mostly False.

The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak was already an epidemic declared by the World Health Organization and was largely isolated to West Africa. Although the outbreak coincided with Barack Obama’s presidency, only 11 people were treated for Ebola in the U.S. during the epidemic.

During the early days of the epidemic in October 2014, U.S. stocks went down more than one percent when the first diagnosed Ebola patient on U.S. soil spooked investors.

On October 13, 2014, Reuters reported that the S&P 500 went down more than one percent and had its worst three-day decline since November 2011.

This was all after the country worried that “global economic weakness [would] dampen U.S. earnings, along with concern about the spread of Ebola,” according to Reuters.

That did not stop former Secretary of State John Kerry from rewriting history on the subject.

“For the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, we led by example … we stopped Ebola before it became a pandemic,” Kerry said Tuesday night during the Democratic National Convention.