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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Photo Credit: Jack MooreBy Jeff Mason and James Harding Giahyue.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday called West Africa’s deadly Ebola outbreak a looming threat to global security and announced a major expansion of the U.S. role in trying to halt its spread, including deployment of 3,000 troops to the region.

“The reality is that this epidemic is going to get worse before it gets better,” Obama said at the Atlanta headquarters of the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“But, right now, the world still has an opportunity to save countless lives. Right now, the world has the responsibility to act, to step up and to do more. The United States of America intends to do more,” he added.
The U.S. plan, a dramatic expansion of Washington’s initial response last week, won praise from the U.N. World Health Organization, aid workers and officials in West Africa. Experts said it was still not enough to contain the epidemic, which is rapidly spreading and has caused already-weak local public health systems to buckle under the strain of fighting it.

U.S. officials said the focus of the military deployment would be Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves that is the hardest hit of the countries affected by the crisis.

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EBOLA SURVIVOR: NO TIME TO WASTE AS OBAMA UPS AID

BY LAURAN NEERGAARD AND JIM KUHNHENN.

An American doctor who survived Ebola said there’s no time to waste as President Barack Obama outlined his plan to ramp up the U.S. response to the epidemic in West Africa.

“We can’t afford to wait months, or even weeks, to take action, to put people on the ground,” Dr. Kent Brantly told senators Tuesday.

Obama called the Ebola crisis a threat to world security as he ordered up to 3,000 U.S. military personnel to the region along with an aggressive effort to train health care workers and deliver field hospitals. Under the plan, the government could end up devoting $1 billion to containing the disease.

“If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people affected, with profound economic, political and security implications for all of us,” Obama said after briefings in Atlanta with doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from Emory University, where Brantly and two other aid workers with Ebola have been treated.

Obama acted under pressure from regional leaders and international aid organizations who pleaded for a heightened U.S. role in confronting the deadly virus. He called on other countries to also quickly supply more health workers, equipment and money.

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By The Extinction Protocol.

Today, the Ebola virus spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids, such as blood and vomit. But some of the nation’s top infectious disease experts worry that this deadly virus could mutate and be transmitted just by a cough or a sneeze. “It’s the single greatest concern I’ve ever had in my 40-year public health career,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “I can’t imagine anything in my career — and this includes HIV — that would be more devastating to the world than a respiratory transmissible Ebola virus.” Osterholm and other experts couldn’t think of another virus that has made the transition from non-airborne to airborne in humans. They say the chances are relatively small that Ebola will make that jump. But as the virus spreads, they warned, the likelihood increases. Every time a new person gets Ebola, the virus gets another chance to mutate and develop new capabilities. Osterholm calls it “genetic roulette.” As of Friday, there have been 4,784 cases of Ebola, with 2,400 deaths, according to the World Health Organization, which says the virus is spreading at a much faster rate now than it was earlier in the outbreak.

Ebola is an RNA virus, which means every time it copies itself; it makes one or two mutations. Many of those mutations mean nothing, but some of them might be able to change the way the virus behaves inside the human body. “Imagine every time you copy an essay, you change a word or two. Eventually, it’s going to change the meaning of the essay,” said Dr. C.J. Peters, one of the heroes featured in “The Hot Zone.” That book chronicles the 1989 outbreak of Ebola Reston, which was transmitted among monkeys by breathing. In 2012, Canadian researchers found that Ebola Zaire, which is involved in the current outbreak, was passed from pigs to monkeys in the air…

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Photo Credit: APOXFORD STUDY: 15 CURRENTLY UNCONTAMINATED COUNTRIES AT RISK OF EBOLA OUTBREAK

By FRANCES MARTEL.

The largest Ebola outbreak in history, spanning five west African countries, continues to spread and threatens to engulf the infrastructures of multiple nations. The situation could get worse for the continent, according to one Oxford University study that finds animals carrying the virus are being eaten in at least 15 different countries at risk for an outbreak.

The Washington Post distills the results of the study, which focused on the migration and living habits of fruit bats, considered among the most dangerous carriers of Ebola. Fruit bats can transfer the Ebola virus to other animals like monkeys and rodents, all of which are often consumed in African countries as “bush meat,” a valuable source of protein in regions where the nutrient is difficult to come by.

Judging by the animal populations, researcher Nick Golding explains that the “likely ‘reservoir’ of Ebola virus in animal populations” and where humans come into contact with them paints a troubling picture. That reservoir of Ebola, waiting to be tapped by a hunter catching a contaminated animal and eating it undercooked, is “larger than has been previously appreciated,” according to Golding.

And that reservoir affects up to 22 countries, including those currently battling the virus: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. All cases in West Africa can be traced back to one patient, a child in rural Guinea. The cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo are believed to be a second outbreak triggered by a different instance of humans eating bush meat; the current death toll there stands at 35, significantly less than the 2,288 killed in West Africa.

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