Ebola Outbreak Continues To Expand

symbolset writes in with the latest about an ebola outbreak spreading across West Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to monitor the evolution of the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. The current epidemic trend of EVD outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia remains serious, with 67 new cases and 19 deaths reported July 15-17, 2014. These include suspect, probable, and laboratory-confirmed cases. The EVD outbreak in Guinea continues to show a declining trend, with no new cases reported during this period. Critical analyses and review of the current outbreak response is being undertaken to inform the process of developing prioritized national operational plans. Effective implementation of the prioritized plans will be vital in reversing the current trend of EVD outbreak, especially in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Comments

Coming to a plane journey

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming to a plane journey near you, has that chap near you coughing just clearing his throat or is he seriously ill ?
Is he sweating from the heat or fever ?

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[Trepidity]

It also doesn't transmit very easily. So far there are no known cases of it being transmitted in a plane or airport, despite several known Ebola cases having flown on planes. In each case everyone who had flown with them was monitored, but nobody developed the illness.

It helps that it doesn't travel by air or aerosols.

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[mspohr]

The problem is that people move around... a lot. Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days so that gives an infected person lots of symptom free time to travel to visit his neighboring village or go to the city or get on a plane to visit relatives anywhere in the world.

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[Anonymous Coward]

The black plague had a much lower mortality rate than ebola does. The plague also had a very good vector in the fleas on rodents. It wasn't spread as much by human to human transmission as it was by flea bite. Also, the statement that viruses with a very high mortality rate tend to be self limiting is indeed true - although the slower the time from infection to death the faster the spread. Ebola kills very quickly and that limits the spread significantly. It will need to develop to be less quickly lethal in order to spread better.

Re:Coming to a plane journey

[Shortguy881]

Actually Ebola can be transmitted through the air. During the initial discovery and research into the Ebola, there were two major groups involved: the CDC and USAMRIID (CDC's military counterpart).

The CDC's lead researcher of Ebola did a lot of onsite visits in Africa with patients and never contracted the virus, so the CDC's stance is that it is not an air born illness. The team from USAMRIID conducted tests on Ebola in a closed environment with an uninfected control group. The control group was in the same room as the infected group but separated by cages on either side of the room so there was no physical contact between groups. The entire control group got infected, so if you ask USAMRIID, its air born.

The result isn't surprising do to the nature of Ebola. The virus destroys all tissues including lung tissue. Any virus that is exposed to the air in the lungs has the chance of being air born.

Research in 2012 also confirmed this with cross species air born contamination in a controlled environment.

Re:Effective communication

[Sockatume]

There are five viruses that cause EVD, only one of which is actually called "ebola".

Re:Vaccine in the 2030's?

[CrimsonAvenger]

was known to be effective by '97

From your link, it was known to have "great potential" by '97.

Which is NOT the same as "known to be effective".