Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have confirmed one case of Ebola in what appears to be the first new outbreak of the deadly virus since the massive epidemic that hit West Africa in 2014-’15.
According to reports, nine people in a very remote part of the country recently fell ill with a hemorrhagic fever. The World Health Organization reports three have died, but only one so far has tested positive for Ebola.
Eugene Kabambi, a World Health Organization official, told Reuters that the confirmed case occurred “in a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky. We always take this very seriously.”
Ebola is a virus known to circulate in populations of chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, and a few other animals in the rainforests of West and Central Africa. But occasionally it infects humans who come contact with those animals’ or fellow infected humans’ bodily fluids, causing intermittent outbreaks. The fever is associated with vomiting and blood loss, and kills around half of all the people it infects.
The WHO is currently deploying health care workers to manage the outbreak and do surveillance to track it. “‘The first teams of epidemiologists, biologists, and experts in the areas of social mobilization, risk communication and community engagement, and also personnel specializing in water, hygiene and sanitation, are scheduled to reach the affected area today or tomorrow,” the WHO reported Friday.
In the 2014-2015 outbreak, more than 11,000 people died, mainly in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. The DRC was spared the worst of the Ebola outbreak — with just 49 deaths. (The outbreak was declared over in 2016, but the WHO warned of occasional future “flare-ups” of the disease.)
“One case of Ebola is an emergency,” Peter Piot, who co-discovered the virus in the DRC in the 1970s, told the Financial Times. “All epidemics start with one case. You cannot take any risks and you should take all stops out to contain it.”
The world is better prepared for an Ebola outbreak
As Vox’s Julia Belluz reported in December, health officials now have a potent new tool to prevent widespread Ebola outbreak: a vaccine.
The vaccine was tested in a trial involving nearly 12,000 people in Guinea and Sierra Leone during 2015 and 2016. Among the 5,837 people who got the vaccine, no Ebola cases were recorded. By comparison, there were 23 Ebola cases in the control group that had not gotten the vaccine.
"This trial, confirming the 100 percent efficacy of the rVSV Ebola vaccine, is a simply remarkable outcome," Dr. Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust, said of the research. "We’ve shown that by working collaboratively, across international borders and sectors, we can develop and test vaccines rapidly and use them to help bring epidemics to an end."
When these results were published in December, Merck, the vaccine’s manufacturer, committed to ensuring 300,000 doses of the vaccine could be available in the case of an emergency.
But some questions about the vaccine still remain. Namely: How long does the vaccine last? It could be the case that it requires a booster dose a few years after an initial injection. We’ll know more with time. On Friday, the Gavi Vaccine Alliance — a public-private partnership that works to ensure global vaccine supplies — confirmed to Reuters that the vaccines are available to be deployed.
At least it’s an assurance: It’s unlikely a future Ebola epidemic will reach the horrific levels seen in 2014.
And it’s the case that the DRC has a lot of experience dealing with Ebola outbreaks, as Stat News’s Helen Branswell points out.
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