Martial Law: Sierra Leone Orders Citizens to Stay Confined to Homes for Three Days to Combat Ebola Spread
Photo Credit: Natural NewsBy J. D. Heyes.
Increasingly, as the Ebola virus continues to spread and kill, authorities in Africa are becoming more authoritarian in their attempts to contain the deadly disease — steps that look eerily similar to those imposed on Americans in the days following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and which could be imposed again were Ebola to make it to the U.S.
In Sierra Leone, authorities recently ordered people to remain inside their homes for three days later this month, ostensibly in a bid to shut down the spread of the virus, which has now killed nearly 2,300 people all across West Africa.
Abdulai Bayratay, a government spokesman, told The Associated Press that the government is ordering people to remain inside their houses on Sept. 19, 20 and 21. Those dates were chosen to allow people time to get what they needed — food, medicines and other provisions — ahead of the government’s movement ban.
“This will be strictly adhered to without exception,” he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in a telephone interview. “We intend to ensure that the dreaded disease is checked.”
‘Movement ban’ could be extended longer than three days
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Photo Credit: Natural NewsNumber of Ebola cases is ‘increasing exponentially,’ World Health Organization warns
By Ethan A. Huff.
The Ebola crisis has taken a major turn for the worse as the World Health Organization (WHO) announces that the number of infected individuals is now “increasing exponentially.” The uptick is particularly concerning in Liberia, where the international agency says the worst is yet to come.
Among the 4,269 known cases of Ebola in West Africa, nearly 2,300, a little over half, have resulted in death. And roughly half of these deaths have occurred in Liberia, according to the United Nations, with the rest reportedly hailing from nearby Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.
In a recent announcement, WHO warned that the numbers appear to show an exponential increase in infections across West Africa, and that things will get worse before getting better. Underscoring the unusual spread of the disease, experts say Ebola is particularly problematic in the larger cities, and especially in those where public health facilities are lacking.
But the situation is most extreme in Liberia, where entire communities are facing rapid infection due to poor containment measures and a lack of medical personnel. According to data compiled by WHO, some 152 healthcare workers in Liberia are known to have contracted Ebola, and 79 of them have already died.
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By Julie Steenhuysen and Sharon Begley. U.S. health officials said on Tuesday the first patient infected with the deadly Ebola virus had been diagnosed in the country after flying from Liberia to Texas, in a new sign of how the outbreak ravaging West Africa can spread globally.
A former self-proclaimed Congressional candidate from Virginia is using a cruel and ignorant strategy for publicizing his new radio show – asking God to infect all 4 million NRA members with Ebola.
The United Nations said it would take $600 million in supplies to control an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa as the death toll from the worst ever epidemic of the virus topped 1,900 and Guinea warned it had penetrated a new part of the country. The pace of the infection has accelerated, with close to 400 deaths in the past week, officials said on Wednesday. It was first detected deep in the forests of southeastern Guinea in March. The hemorrhagic fever has now spread to five countries in the region and has killed more people than all outbreaks since Ebola was first uncovered in 1976. “This Ebola epidemic is the longest, the most severe and the most complex we’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) at a press conference in Washington, adding that there were more than 3,500 cases across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Dr. David Nabarro, senior U.N. Coordinator for Ebola, said the cost of getting the supplies needed by West Africa countries to control the crisis would amount to $600 million. That was higher than an estimate of $490 million by the WHO last week. Dr Rick Sacra, a 51-year-old Boston physician infected with Ebola in Liberia, could be medically evacuated as soon as Thursday, according to staff at the hospital where he worked.
For the first time, scientists have been able to follow the spread of an Ebola outbreak almost in real time, by sequencing the virus’ genome from people in Sierra Leone. The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, offer new insights into how the outbreak started in West Africa and how fast the virus is mutating. An international team of researchers sequenced 99 Ebola genomes, with extremely high accuracy, from 78 people diagnosed with Ebola in Sierra Leone in June. The Ebola genome is incredibly simple. It has just seven genes. By comparison, we humans have about 20,000 genes. “In general, these viruses are amazing because they are these tiny things that can do a lot of damage,” says Pardis Sabeti, a computational biologist at Harvard University and the lead author of the study. Hidden inside Ebola’s tiny genome, she says, are clues to how the virus spreads among people — and how to stop it. “As soon as the outbreak happened and was reported in Guinea,” she says, “two members of my lab flew out and worked to set up the diagnostics to pick it up in Sierra Leone.” The team helped to find the first Ebola cases in Sierra Leone. They also immediately shipped diagnostic samples from the patients back to the U.S. and started sequencing the viruses’ genomes. “We had 20 people in my lab working around-the-clock,” Sabeti says. Their furious pace paid off. After just a week or so, the team had decoded gene sequences from 99 Ebola viruses. The data offered a treasure-trove of information about the outbreak. For starters, the data show that the virus is rapidly accumulating new mutations as it spreads through people. “We’ve found over 250 mutations that are changing in real time as we’re watching,” Sabeti says.
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