As an outbreak of Ebola spreads in Uganda, officers from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention stay assured that the virus could be contained.
Joel Montgomery, who leads the company’s Viral Particular Pathogens department, lately returned from Uganda, the place he met with CDC groups already on the bottom and officers from the nation’s Well being Ministry.
As of Tuesday, there had been 60 confirmed circumstances and 24 deaths within the outbreak, which started final month, in accordance with the Well being Ministry.
“I really feel assured that Uganda can management this,” Montgomery mentioned. “They have been responding to Ebola outbreaks for years now and are literally fairly good at it.”
The CDC alerted physicians nationwide to the outbreak this month, asking them to pay attention to signs and to evaluation how they might take care of a affected person within the occasion {that a} sick traveler arrived within the U.S.
Kevin Griffis, the top of communications on the CDC, mentioned Tuesday that there aren’t any suspected or confirmed circumstances of Ebola within the U.S., however misinformation circulating on social media.
The U.S. has routed all vacationers from Uganda to one in every of 5 airports to be screened for signs, corresponding to fever. It’s not a foolproof system, nevertheless. It will possibly take as much as 21 days earlier than a affected person with Ebola begins to point out signs.
Nonetheless, company officers and public well being specialists say the chances of an Ebola affected person’s being within the U.S. are low and belief that the virus may very well be contained if it arrived on U.S. soil.
“We all know how you can management it. We all know how you can cease it,” Montgomery mentioned. “And that is over a decade’s expertise in coping with these responses.”
Specialists have expressed confidence within the CDC’s dealing with of the outbreak to this point, regardless of missteps throughout the Covid pandemic.
Tara Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State College School of Public Well being in Ohio, mentioned the response to Ebola in Uganda has been applicable, and she or he recommended the “glorious CDC scientists” engaged within the day-to-day response.
Whereas Ebola is deadlier than Covid, it’s simpler to comprise. Ebola shouldn’t be an airborne virus. It’s unfold via direct contact with an contaminated individual’s blood or different bodily fluids. The individuals most in danger, due to this fact, are family contacts and well being care employees treating Ebola sufferers.
Within the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa — the biggest outbreak in historical past, with greater than 28,000 circumstances and greater than 11,000 deaths — simply 4 individuals had been identified within the U.S. One, a person in Dallas who had traveled from West Africa, died. Seven different individuals bought sick working in Africa and had been evacuated to the U.S. for remedy; they recovered.
Though the present outbreak is way smaller, infectious illness specialists within the U.S. are on the alert.
“That is one thing we’re watching actually intently,” mentioned Dr. Angela Hewlett, the medical director of the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit at Nebraska Medication. “I simply inform all of our people to maintain their cellphones on.”
The Nebraska Biocontainment Unit handled three sufferers within the 2014-16 outbreak. On the time, it was one in every of simply three such amenities within the U.S. Now, there are 10.
In 2019, a vaccine was authorized for the Ebola virus that brought on the 2014 outbreak. The present Ebola outbreak, nevertheless, is brought on by a distinct species of the virus, and no vaccines or direct remedies can be found. The one remedy is supportive care, corresponding to retaining sufferers correctly hydrated.
The Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Ailments and the College of Oxford in the UK have developed vaccines to focus on the virus inflicting the present outbreak. On Wednesday, a World Well being Group official advised the Related Press that the trials will start in Uganda in about “two weeks.”
The Ebola virus causes hemorrhagic fever, resulting in issues with how the physique clots blood. The sickness usually begins with a fever and headache after which progresses to vomiting, diarrhea, excessive fatigue and weak point. In later levels, some individuals may have pink eyes, rashes and inside bleeding.
“For now, that is clearly a regarding and rising menace in Uganda, and I am very involved for well being care employees there,” Smith mentioned. “However to be an existential menace to the US proper now? I simply do not see it.”
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