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Medicine

New Ebola Outbreak Declared in Congo City That Last Saw the Virus in 2018 (washingtonpost.com) 56

Posted by msmash from the breaking-news dept.
Congo's health minister confirmed the discovery of a new Ebola case in the country's Equateur province, which last saw an outbreak of the highly deadly virus in 2018, ultimately killing 33 people there. From a report: The province's governor, Bobo Boloko Bolumbu, spoke on national radio earlier on Monday, saying there were five likely cases and that four of those infected had already died. He said the cases were found in Mbandaka, the provincial capital, which is home to more than 1 million people and is an important port city at the confluence of the Congo and Ruki rivers, which are heavily plied for trade and transport. The World Health Organization's director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said later on Monday that six cases had been identified by Congo's Health Ministry. He said the WHO's response was already underway.

No cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Mbandaka, although more than 3,000 have been confirmed across Congo. The coronavirus and Ebola are unrelated. Ebola, which is endemic to Africa's tropical rainforests, is transmitted only through contact with an infected person's bodily fluids and manifests as a hemorrhagic fever accompanied in severe cases by vomiting and extensive internal bleeding. Congo has grappled for almost two years with a separate Ebola outbreak in its northeastern provinces that has killed 2,272 people so far. In April, the end of that outbreak, the country's worst, had been just days away from being declared over when new cases were found. The same region is also home to the world's largest ongoing measles outbreak. Further reading: WHO's statement. .
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New Ebola Outbreak Declared in Congo City That Last Saw the Virus in 2018 More

New Ebola Outbreak Declared in Congo City That Last Saw the Virus in 2018

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    • Not much happens. Ebola isn't airborne, and you're not contagious until after you show symptoms. So it's really easy to screen people and prevent an outbreak from spreading. So easy that it's not terribly difficult to contain even in 3rd world countries where an average person's routine medical care is provided by a witch doctor.
      • Still.

        Let's lock down Congo and surrounding areas....no need in letting it out of there.

        • Ridiculous. Congo had epidemics for decades. And you just ignored parent's statements so that's the end of one listening to you.

          Let's lock down and embargo the US instead. That would spare the world from much more social pathogens.
          No, actually, let them do it *themselves* and *want it too*: Just ask Trump! :D

      • Ebola isn't airborne, and you're not contagious until after you show symptoms.
        That is a myth.

        That is what they told us 40 - 50 years ago in school!

        Every Virus, and I would extend that to Bacteria, is contagious regardless if you show symptoms or not.

        Symptoms have absolutely nothing to do with it.

        You have it, you spread. It is that simple.

        • Rabies might be an interesting exception, at least in its early stages; it takes ages for it to work its way through the peripheral nervous system to the salivary glands (at which point it becomes transmissible by reasonable means).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fintux ( 798480 )
        Have you seen the hospitals where Ebola patients are being treated? I don't think they are taking such extreme measures just for fun (under-pressurized rooms, double filtering of exhaust air, people working in pressurized outfits, very careful steps for removing the protective gear, ...). Maybe it's not transmissible in a similar way as measles, but it's still very contagious. The only good thing about it really is that it isn't contagious before the symptoms start, so just everyone with any symptoms should

    • And what happens if someone from China becomes infected and brings it back to their home country?

      Same thing that happens when Ebola came to America: they put the sick people in the hospital, do contact tracing, and the disease is extinguished from the country.

  • RIght now, we need to be spending $ on STOPPING this one ASAP. It has potential to spread since ppl are running all over.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 )

      He is too busy hiding the the White House Basement like a coward.

      • What exactly is in the White House basement? Is it a presidential man-cave, or a presidential bunker?

      • You'd rather see him shooting protesters "like a crazed Rambo"? Or moving to Mar-a-lago "like a Coward"? Or go outside on the White House lawn and address the crowd via megaphone and get pelted and killed with stones by rabid protesters "like a suicidal maniac"?

        Accept that you have TDS and nothing Trump does will satisfy you. Accept that Trump is not responsible for a single police guy in Minneapolis. Accept that Trump is not responsible for a pandemic outbreak in a second rate Chinese city in one of their

    • Agree totally, we dodged a bullet last outbreak and want to dodge it this time. Ebola is very deadly.
      • Yup. And with the medical world already deep in it with covid, this one has a better chance to spread.
      • Weren't the only cases that the U.S. had returning medical workers that had been helping treat infections?

        Transmission requires close contact with bodily fluids. Part of the reason it's so prevalent in certain parts of Africa is that traditional funeral rights put a lot of other people in that kind of close contact with a person who has just died of the disease.

        Another big part of the problem is the same shit we're seeing with the coronavirus where people believe half-baked (if they even qualify for t

    • How's it going to get in? No way for it to migrate here. Even so, Ebola is so deadly it burns itself out before it gets very far. If it were a computer virus, it would be one of those that formats your hard drive and hence doesn't spread.

      This is why what WHO did was so destructive. It traded its credibility for thirty pieces of silver from China. Fortunately there are plenty of other wealthy nations in the world who will step up and pay for WHO. In fact, the fact that they will do so means that American fu

  • Don't worry (Score:4, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @02:05PM (#60132006)

    Ebola isn't a big deal remember. I mean, back during the 2014 outbreak we supposedly had worse leadership and still had zero US citizen deaths on US soil so what would anyone be worried about? Remember back then Trump said American doctors who help people over there shouldn't be let back in the US. He even said Obama should hug people who had Ebola, no ill intents there since Trump knew Ebola wasn't contagious (may have worked with the designers, who knows?).

    • You are pretty out of the loop.

      EBOLA: every country instantly, not immediately, but instantly, locks down everything coming from an affected region.
      CORONA: idiots like the US president and UK prime minster:
      a) ignore it
      b) calm it down later
      c) half arsed react on it
      d) claim it is not that bad
      e) back pedal, yeah we should have reacted earlier, and emphasize: but it is still not that bad
      f) and then realize that all above was the wrong reaction

      If you in the US treat ebola like corona, your country is history. En

  • Ebola vaccine (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @02:16PM (#60132060) Journal
    Isn't there an ebola vaccine already? If so, they should be able to contain the outbreak fairly easily, right?

    • Vaccines generally aren't instant-acting, so I'd guess a vaccine would be of limited efficacy in stopping the current outbreak.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      It's still experimental, there are few doses, and efficacy hasn't been confirmed in humans. Unfortunately there's no money in it so unless someone like the Gates Foundation coughs up a big chunk of change there will never BE many doses available because Big Pharma doesn't give a shit.

      • Maybe Bill Gates is testing a new vaccine.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Well, part of what I said was wrong, thanks for the correction. I hadn't seen the results from rVSV-ZEBOV, that's great, not clear on how many doses have actually been distributed though. It was developed by Public Health of Canada, the others are from universities and governments with one exception.

          I am surprised that Johnson & Johnson got involved, through one of its sleazier subsidiaries. Their vaccine is a two-dose implementation with a longer delay in functionality, I'm not sure what their marke

          • not clear on how many doses have actually been distributed though. It was developed by Public Health of Canada

            I'll bet if you did a search you could find out roughly how many doses have actually been distributed.

    • No, there is no vaccine approved for use in humans. But you make venture capitalists and stock shillers happy when their propaganda makes you think such a thing exists.

      There is nothing, you get Ebola and there is 50 to 90% chance you die.

      But there is something you can do to lessen your chances of contracting or passing on Ebola. Don't eat bats or monkeys. That's the main way people get it.

  • I hope this gets significant national coverage (Score:5, Funny)

    by drew_kime ( 303965 ) on Monday June 01, 2020 @02:25PM (#60132098) Journal
    I just want to see Trump try to pronounce the governor's name: Bobo Boloko Bolumbu.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I just want to see Trump try to pronounce the governor's name: Bobo Boloko Bolumbu.

      "And I'd like to thank my terrific friend, Triple B, also known as Bigly Bigly Bigly."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fintux ( 798480 )
      Hmm... To me, all he says sounds exactly like that.

  • He found our whole Corona panic *hilarious*.

    You know what they call that in the Congo? A good tuesday! :D

    Really nice guy. I wonder if he too had such a wonderfully comedic name. :)

  • I'm sorry, I recall from Obama that Ebola can't even exist in news coverage when a race riot conveniently pops up.
  • Please stop bathing cadavers infected with Ebola and then drinking the leftover liquid.

    What Socio-cultural Practices May Affect Containment Efforts in Ghana? [nih.gov]
  • I can’t believe we could be facing another serious outbreak while still in the midst of covid 19! Even though it has just infected a few people so far, it could easily start spreading from country to country like how covid 19 did. Even though, covid 19 has killed more people than ebola did, ebola has a much high mortality rate for those who were infected!

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