By The Extinction Protocol.
New estimates by the World Health Organization and the U.S. health agency are warning that the number of Ebola cases could soar dramatically – the U.S. says up to 1.4 million by mid-January in two nations alone – unless efforts to curb the outbreak are significantly ramped up. Since the first cases were reported six months ago, the tally of cases in West Africa has reached an estimated 5,800 illnesses and over 2,800 deaths. But the U.N. health agency has warned that tallies of recorded cases and deaths are likely to be gross underestimates of the toll that the killer virus is wreaking on West Africa. The U.N. health agency said Tuesday that the true death toll for Liberia, the hardest-hit nation in the outbreak, may never be known, since many bodies of Ebola victims in a crowded slum in the capital, Monrovia, have simply been thrown into nearby rivers. In its new analysis, WHO said Ebola cases are rising exponentially and warned the disease could sicken people for years to come without better control measures. The WHO’s calculations are based on reported cases only. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, released its own predictions Tuesday for the epidemic’s toll, based partly on the assumption that Ebola cases are being underreported. The report says there could be up to 21,000 reported and unreported cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone by the end of this month and that cases could balloon to as many as 1.4 million by mid-January.
Experts caution those predictions don’t take into account response efforts. The CDC’s numbers seem “somewhat pessimistic” and do not account for infection control efforts already underway, said Dr. Richard Wenzel, a Virginia Commonwealth University scientist who formerly led the International Society for Infectious Diseases. In recent weeks, health officials worldwide have stepped up efforts to provide aid, but the virus is still spreading. There aren’t enough hospital beds, health workers or even soap and water in the hardest-hit West African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Last week, the U.S. announced it would build more than a dozen medical centers in Liberia and send 3,000 troops to help. Britain and France have also pledged to build treatment centers in Sierra Leone and Guinea and the World Bank and UNICEF have sent more than $1 million worth of supplies to the region…
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Mortality rate climbing: Ebola virologist warns outbreak could lead to “the complete breakdown of society”
By The Extinction Protocol.
In a grim assessment of the Ebola epidemic, researchers say the deadly virus threatens to become endemic to West Africa instead of eventually disappearing from humans. “The current epidemiologic outlook is bleak,” wrote a panel of more than 60 World Health Organization experts in a study published Tuesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. “We must therefore face the possibility that Ebola virus disease will become endemic among the human population of West Africa, a prospect that has never previously been contemplated.” In the absence of new control measures, the authors estimated that the total case load would exceed 20,000 by Nov 2. “The numbers of cases of and deaths from EVD are expected to continue increasing from hundreds to thousands per week in the coming months,” the authors wrote. As of Monday, the United Nations health organization reported that out of a total of 5,864 confirmed and probable cases, 2,811 deaths have resulted.
“The true numbers of cases and deaths are certainly higher,” the authors wrote. “There are numerous reports of symptomatic persons evading diagnosis and treatment, of laboratory diagnoses that have not been included in national databases, and of persons with suspected Ebola virus disease who were buried without a diagnosis having been made.” When a virus is slow to mutate, as Ebola appears to be, the pathogen steadily wanes as the number of people who have developed immunity increases. With proper controls, experts say the virus would find it increasingly difficult to spread among the population until it eventually disappeared from humans and survived only in its so-called animal reservoir, which is believed to be a fruit bat. In this case however, epidemiologists fear that the virus could continue to linger in small pockets, extending its life in humans and potentially mutating in a way that makes fighting it more difficult. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, and Dr. Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the epidemic has helped to degrade an already meager system of healthcare.
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WHO warns Ebola outbreak could virtually last forever if not shortly contained
By The Extinction Protocol.
If the world doesn’t get the Ebola outbreak in West Africa under control quickly, the disease could become a permanent fixture in the region, spreading as routinely as malaria or the flu, the World Health Organization warns today in a new report. Although some experts dispute that dire scenario, many agree that the virus could circulate for years if it’s not stopped soon. The notion that Ebola could become endemic in West Africa — spreading routinely, rather than in sporadic outbreaks — is “a prospect that has never before been contemplated,” according to the report, published online in the New England Journal of Medicine. There could be 20,000 cases by Nov. 2, with thousands of new cases per week, the report said. About 70% of patients are dying from the illness. “We are concerned that without a massive increase in the response, way beyond what is being planned in scale and urgency … it will prove impossible to bring the epidemic under control,” wrote disease researchers Jeremy Farrar, of the Wellcome Trust, and Peter Piot, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in an accompanying editorial. The Ebola virus has caused more than 20 outbreaks in the past four decades, mostly in remote villages in Central Africa. Although some outbreaks were severe, public health officials were always able to put a stop to them — even without effective treatments or vaccines — by quickly and methodically diagnosing patients, making a list of everyone those patients might have exposed and then monitoring those contacts.
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