There's been lots of diaries on Ebola on Daily Kos, an average of more than one per day this year, so there's lots of background and news available. I'll skip repeating that, and get right to the breaking news:
The WHO [World Health Organization] said it had withdrawn staff from the laboratory testing for Ebola at Kailahun -- one of only two in Sierra Leone -- after a Senegalese epidemiologist was infected with Ebola.
Kailahun is the hardest hit area in Sierra Leone. The closure of the lab will certainly not help fight the deadly epidemic. Work will continue at WHO's other lab in the country at Kenema, where their infected worker is currently being treated.
Doctors Without Borders (Medicins Sans Frontieres/MSF) has a facility in Kailahun which
remains open.
WHO says the lab will reopen after evaluation, though they have not yet determined how long that will take.
A WHO team arrived Tuesday in Kailahun to try to determine how the health worker became infected, review the living and working environment, and identify factors that could put others at risk.
As a precaution,
Canada is also recalling workers from Sierra Leone:
The Public Health Agency of Canada said in a statement late Tuesday it is finalizing plans to bring the three-person mobile team from Winnipeg's National Microbiology Laboratory home from Sierra Leone.
The team is being recalled after three people staying at their hotel were diagnosed with the Ebola virus. None of the team members had direct contact with those diagnosed, and they are not displaying any signs of illness, officials said.
In another story developing over the last few days, is that there is now an additional Ebola outbreak area in the remote NW province of Equateur in Congo. The UN has reported 13 deaths in the area, including 5 health workers. Reuters reports that MSF has limited capacity to help in Equateur.
Congo said on Sunday it would quarantine the area around the town of Djera, in the isolated northwestern jungle province of Equateur, where a high number of suspected cases has been reported. It is Congo's seventh outbreak since Ebola was discovered in 1976 in Equateur, near the Ebola river.
Authorities in Congo say this is a different strain than the epidemic active in Sierra Leone and other West African countries. Additional lab work is being performed in Germany to confirm this. Different strains of Ebola have varying mortality rates.
The death toll of the West African epidemic stands at a minimum of 1,427 out of 2,615 reported cases. This number is certainly low, as not all cases are reported, particularly from remote areas. Sierra Leone recently enacted criminal penalties for hiding Ebola patients, and has deployed troops to enforce quarantine areas. Liberia has also blockaded an area of Monrovia with 70,000 residents as a quarantine zone.
Scary stuff.