Reuters reports that the West African Ebola outbreak caused by new strain of disease: study, and not the Zaire strain imported from Central Africa as previously reported.
Because the new Guinea strain is genetically 97% similar to the Zaire strain, which is the deadliest of the five previously known strains of the Ebola virus, EBOV, scientists say the virus was not imported from Central Africa, but has probably been indigenous to the region, and has just not been noticed before. In sparely populated areas, an outbreak of Ebola will often "burn out" on its own, after killing everyone in a village or remote region. Then it resides in a reservoir animals, such as bats, which are not vulnerable to Ebola. until another transmission to humans, often for as long as a decade, based on limited detection since the 1970's when it was first detected.
"This study demonstrates the emergence of a new EBOV strain in Guinea," wrote the group of more than 30 doctors and scientists, who published their preliminary findings on the website of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"It is possible that EBOV has circulated undetected in this region for some time. The emergence of the virus in Guinea highlights the risk of EBOV outbreaks in the whole West African sub-region," the report continued.
Of the 197 clinical cases of Ebola declared in Guinea, 122 have died including several health workers, according to the World Health Organisation's latest update, which cited Guinean health ministry figures. Sixteen of those died in the capital Conakry.
A government spokesmen, presumable from Guinea told Reuters it will no longer issue death tolls to avoid causing panic.
Additionally, Liberia is reported to have had 13 deaths from 26 confirmed and suspected cases. The cases reported earlier for Mali and Sierra Leone now appear to be some other viral hemorrhagic disease, many of which are indigenous to the region.
Earlier in the week, the World Health Organization predicted the epidemic would last for another 2 to 4 months, which may be optimistic and is based on the presumption that new cases of animal to human infection are not occurring because populations have stopped eating potentially infected bush meat such as primates, bats, gazelles, and antelopes, and also populations will cease all risky contacts with potentially infected people from now one, or at least very quickly.
The fact that symptoms can take from 2 to 21 days from infection makes this challenging. The Ebola virus is spread from bodily fluids including blood, semen, sweat, spit, or objects contaminated by an infected person. Some of the infected people still look healthy at first, so you can imagine how much behavior change will be involved in ending these transmission vectors.
"What is clear to us from the study is that the virus wasn't brought in from the outside, that it is indigenous," said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the WHO, which was not involved in authoring the study.
"It means there were possibly outbreaks in the past that were just not detected," he said.
Surrounding countries such as Senegal, Gambia and even Saudi Arabia have imposed travel restriction from Guinea, even though the WHO do not recommend this as necessary.
Our hearts, sympathies, prayers, and/or best wishes go out to all the afflicted and their friends, families and loved ones.
