Ebola cases in Congo rise as authorities race to contain outbreak, health agency says. A RESEARCH FACILITY within the US National Institutes of Healththat is tasked with studying Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases has been instructed by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to stop research activities.
Africa’s top public health agency said Thursday that suspected Ebola cases in Congo’s southern Kasai province have more than doubled since last week
ABC: The number of suspected Ebola cases in Congo’ssouthern Kasai province have more than doubled in a week since a new outbreak was confirmed there, Africa’s top public health agency said Thursday.
The suspected cases have increased from 28 to 68 in recent days, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at an online briefing. It has also spread from to two to four districts while the death toll currently stands at 16.
WHO: In Tanzania, for example, disease surveillance is being enhanced in localities bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo to swiftly detect any cases and respond in a timely manner to halt any further transmission of the virus.
Cross border speeds the spread of this highly contagious virus, especially in rural epicenters with limited resources and the necessity for travel across distances for resources, medical care, employment and school. Ebola is fatal in 50 – 90% of cases and can be caught from living and dead patients.
WIRED: “In April of this year, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stopped the research on vaccines and treatments for Ebola, Marburg and Lassa among other hemorrhagic fevers. The Department of Homeland Security was padlocking freezers in biosafety-level-4 labs, those with the highest level of biosafety containment used for studying highly dangerous microbes. Only about a dozen BSL-4 labs exist in North America. These labs work with the viruses that cause Ebola, Lassa fever, and Marburg, types of hemorrhagic fevers. The Integrated Research Facility is one of only a few places in the world that is able to perform medical imaging on animals infected with BSL-4 agents.
“The sacrifice to research is immense,” says Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, on the closure. “If things are unused for a period of time, it will cost more money to get them ready to be used again.”