Concerns about the new Ebola scare in Sierra Leone has the head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) flying to that nation.
The report of the trip comes on the heels of Sierra Leone officials admitting they have two more new cases of the virus connected to the first victim who died last week.
“We now know where the virus is and we are tracking its movement, by surrounding, containing and eradicating its last remaining chain of transmission,” ational Ebola Response Centre’s OB Sisay said.
CDC Head Dr. Tom Frieden reportedly will help assess the situation and provide advice on steps needed to control the new outbreak.
Officials say the problem with controlling the virus early is that the initial symptom of fever is similar to that of other diseases such as malaria and typhoid. That would lead some folks who have Ebola to not seek treatment or isolate themselves because they don’t know they have the deadly virus.
The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 11,200 people worldwide although the overwhelming number of deaths were in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
Liberian officials confirmed today a woman has died in Monrovia from the Ebola virus.
The death makes the sixth confirmed case of the virus since it re-emerged last month following a seven week period without any new cases.
“There is one new case. This time, the response area is Montserrado county. The person died in Monrovia,” Liberia’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francis Ketteh told Reuters.
A report on the case stated the woman died just hours after being admitted to the hospital and showed a failure in the government’s process of surveillance of those who had contacts with other Ebola patients is not effective.
Doctors are speculating the virus was lying dormant during the seven week period with no infections and that it passed from a disease survivor to another person through sexual contact.
Ebola has killed over 11,200 people since the beginning of the outbreak in December 2013. Liberia had been declared “Ebola free” by the World Health Organization on May 9th.
A new report on the deaths of three German men who worked as squirrel breeders has found that they all died from a new strain of virus that jumped from the squirrels to the men.
“A new bornavirus that can be transmitted to humans and cause severe disease has been detected in variegated squirrels. The study shows that exotic animal species can have the risk of transmitting novel zoonotic viruses to humans from close contact,” said Dr. Martin Beer, head of virus diagnostics at Germany’s Friedrich-Loeffler Institute.
The men developed encephaltits, or brain inflammation, and died within two to four months after showing symptoms
The breed of squirrel involved live in southern Mexico and Central America. That’s one of the reasons Dr. Marc Siegel of NYU Langone Medical Center in New York told HealthDay the general public shouldn’t be concerned at this time.
“It’s likely that bornavirus, commonly found in horses and sheep and capable of causing neurological symptoms, was present in the squirrels that scratched these men, causing the neurological and behavioral symptoms,” he said. “It is possible that this virus could spread to squirrels here in the U.S. and occasionally to humans, but we wouldn’t see sustained spread, as there is no evidence of spread from human to human.”
All the men who died from the virus were in their 60s or older and had other health conditions that doctors say could have contributed to the virus being able to impact them.
A new strain of a polio-like virus has been suggested as the cause of paralysis of more than 100 children 34 states in the last year.
LiveScience reported on a study from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) focused on a 6-year-old girl at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital that showed “acute onset of progressive right upper extremity weakness.”
“Within the 2 weeks before the patient’s presentation to the hospital, she and her family members had been ill with a mild cough and rhinorrhea; 4 days before presentation, the patient had experienced low-grade fever (100.4° F), frontal headache, fatigue, and intermittent pain in the right ear and right axilla. The fever lasted only 1 day; the cough, fatigue, and headache improved over the next 2 days, but the patient continued to report right arm pain. On the day before seeking care, her parents observed that she had a right shoulder droop and difficulty using her right hand. No associated visual or mental status changes; difficulty with speech, swallowing, or respiration; or bowel/bladder disturbance were noted,” the study reads.
Enterovirus C105 was found to have caused the girl’s condition. The virus was first detected in 2010 in Peru and the Republic of Congo.
Previously, children showing paralysis had been infected with Enterovirus D68.
“We probably shouldn’t be quite so fast to jump to enterovirus D68 as the [only] cause of these cases,” Professor Ronald Turner, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine told LiveScience.
Liberian officials confirmed a third case of Ebola on Thursday, two months after the country had declared itself Ebola free.
A case management leader for the country’s Ebola Task Force says that the three villagers with the disease “have a history of having had dog meat together.” Dog meat is common in the diet of Liberians.
The first confirmed case, a 17-year-old boy, died Sunday about 30 miles from the capital city of Monrovia. The other two cases are in the same village as the dead teen.
“The two (latest) live cases are 24 years old and 27 years old. They are stable,” Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said on Thursday.
Scientists say that there is no proof yet that dogs can carry the Ebola virus. Humans have been infected in past outbreaks by eating contaminated monkey meat.
“There is no need to panic. Our health team is on top of it. It will be contained,” Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told Reuters.
At least 175 people are being monitored because of contact with the three confirmed cases.
President Obama announced the progress against the Ebola outbreak in West Africa allows U.S. troops to come home.
“We have risen to the challenge,” he said at the White House. “Our focus now is getting to zero.”
Around 1,500 troops have already returned and 2,700 more will return by April 30th. Only 100 military officials will stay in Liberia after that date to provide advice on containment.
The President said the way Ebola has been brought under control shows that calls for travel restrictions and harsh measures were not necessary.
“People were understandably afraid,” Obama said. “Some stoked those fears.”
The President praised charitable groups that took the initiative to go and help the victims of the outbreak.
British scientists say they have found a way to “jam” the genetic code of the common cold and stop the virus from being able to replicate inside the body.
If true, it could mean almost immediate cures to the common cold.
Scientists with the Universities of Leeds and York say they used a computer model to identify the viral genome that causes rhinoviruses. The molecules can be blocked at the genetic level and essentially stop the disease before it starts.
The breakthrough’s news was tempered by the fact the scientists would have to conduct animal testing before they can develop the drug that could deliver the necessary items to block the genetic code.
“We have understood for decades that the RNA carries the genetic messages that create viral proteins, but we didn’t know that, hidden within the stream of letters we use to denote the genetic information, is a second code governing virus assembly,” Dr Roman Tuma, Reader in Biophysics at the University of Leeds, told the London Daily Telegraph.
“It is like finding a secret message within an ordinary news report and then being able to crack the whole coding system behind it.”
Health officials fighting the outbreak of Ebola in Liberia have confirmed that a new wave of the virus has broken out near the Sierra Leone border.
Authorities say that dozens of new cases have been rushing into health centers and marks a huge setback to the nation, which had thought they were bringing the viral outbreak under control.
Assistant Health minister Tolbert Nyenswah said that the new cases could be connected to people traveling across the Sierra Leone border and returning home. Sierra Leone has passed Liberia for the total number of Ebola cases.
Liberia has reported close to 3,400 deaths from Ebola and over 8,000 cases. The World Health Organization says that Sierra Leone has now passed Liberia with 9,000 cases of the deadly virus.
Liberian officials did not say if they would take steps to block border crossings.
Government officials in Sierra Leone announced the country’s leading doctor died from Ebola Thursday just hours after the arrival of experimental drugs to treat him.
Dr. Victor Willoughby contracted the virus after working on a patient that came in complaining of pain in his organs. The patient, a senior banker in the nation, was later confirmed to have had Ebola after his death.
Sierra Leone Chief Medical Officer Brima Kargbo said that the experimental drug ZMapp was flown into the country in a frozen form but had not thawed when Dr. Willoughby’s health declined to the point of death.
His death makes the 11th doctor in Sierra Leone to die from Ebola during the massive outbreak out of 12 infected. In addition to the doctors, 109 of 142 health care workers infected with the virus have died.
“We’ve lost personal friends and colleagues we’ve worked with. It’s extremely depressing and frustrating. You can talk to someone today and tomorrow they are Ebola-infected,” Dr M’Baimba Baryoh said. “The tension, the depression, it’s a lot of pressure. You start having nightmares because of Ebola.”
The epidemic’s official death toll continues to rise toward a gruesome new mark, closing in on 7,000 total deaths. Officials admit that the death toll is likely much higher than the official count as many families in rural areas have buried victims without seeking government assistance.
Officials in Sierra Leone were forced to admit a major Ebola outbreak went largely unreported to international health officials after the World Health Organization found dozens of Ebola victims’ bodies stacked in a pile at a hospital.
The WHO says a response team has been sent into the Kono district are a reported spike in Ebola cases.
“They uncovered a grim scene,” the U.N. health agency said in a statement. “In 11 days, two teams buried 87 bodies, including a nurse, an ambulance driver, and a janitor drafted into removing bodies as they piled up.”
The WHO team found that Ebola had hit 8 of the 15 chiefdoms in the area and it had not been reported to officials.
“We are only seeing the ears of the hippo,” Dr. Amara Jambai, Sierra Leone’s Director of Disease Prevention and Control told Fox News.
Sierra Leone has seen a significant rise in reported cases of Ebola and has overtaken neighbor Liberia for total number of cases. Liberia, however, has 1,400 more deaths listed in the official death toll.
However, Sierra Leone officials admitted they had only been counting deaths of patients with laboratory confirmed cases of Ebola, so many had died without being tested and confirmed to have the virus.