WHO Holds ‘Urgent’ Meeting Over Outbreak of Marburg Virus in Equatorial Guinea
Neighboring Cameroon is also on the alert for the Ebola-like pathogen, and has restricted movement on the border.
The World Health Organization(WHO) has just convened an urgent meeting due to an outbreak of an Ebola-like, hemorrhagic pathogen known as the Marburg Virus in Equatorial Guinea.
The leading health body brought experts from around the world together to discuss how to ramp up the development of vaccines and therapeutics for Marburg virus.
There are growing fears that the world could be caught off guard by the currently untreatable infection that kills up to 88 percent of the people it infects.
The virus, considered a more dangerous cousin of Ebola, has killed nine people in Equatorial Guinea in the Central African nation’s first outbreak. More than a dozen others are believed to be infected.
Neighboring Cameroon is also on the alert for the pathogen and has restricted movement on the border.
Cameroonian authorities detected two suspected cases of Marburg disease on Monday in Olamze, a commune on the border with Equatorial Guinea, the public health delegate for the region, Robert Mathurin Bidjang, said on Tuesday.
…Neighbouring Cameroon had restricted movement along the border to avoid contagion following reports of an unknown, deadly hemorrhagic fever in Equatorial Guinea last week.
“On the 13th of February, we had two suspected cases. These are two 16-year-old children, a boy and a girl, who have no previous travel history to the affected areas in Equatorial Guinea,” Bidjang said at a meeting in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde.
Forty-two people who came into contact with the two children have been identified and contact tracing was ongoing, he added.
It turns out that bats are the ‘reservoir hosts‘ for the Marbug virus.
Like Ebola, the Marburg virus originates in bats and spreads between people via close contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, or surfaces, like contaminated bed sheets.
Marburg causes Marburg virus disease, a hemorrhagic fever that can affect the body’s organs and cause bleeding, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Marburg virus is a zoonotic virus that, along with the six species of Ebola virus, comprises the filovirus family, the CDC said.
The rare virus was first identified in 1967 after it caused simultaneous outbreaks of disease in laboratories in Marburg, Germany and Belgrade, according to the CDC..
Thirty-one people who were exposed to the virus while conducting research on monkeys became ill, and seven died, according to the CDC.
African fruit bats are the reservoir hosts of the virus, the CDC said.
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Comments
My very first thought was “At least it’s not Mutaba!”
I thought Ebola was from monkeys. But maybe it just comes through monkeys. Still, if you don’t screw with monkeys*, you don’t tend to get Ebola.
(* Or, lay down with your dead family member who died from… Ebola. It’s evidently a thing there.)
No matter what, we need to quarantine the monkeys this time, not the humans. (And, yes, I’ll included CDC leaders in that.)
I laid down with my
Mother when she died, I just had to say goodbye and hold her…
We’re 21 months from an election. Aren’t they starting the next scare a bit early?
Well, these things take time. For one thing, the name has to be changed. People from Marburg will be offended. Then Janssen and Sabin need to test their vaccines, probably on some innocent animals like bears.
Yay – another fear p*rn campaign.
“It turns out that bats are the ‘reservoir hosts‘ for the Marbug virus.”
COVID, Marburg, tasty soup! Is there anything bats can’t do?
And we thought cockroaches were going to inherit the earth.
Don’t worry, establishment hack Nikki Haley is coming to the rescue.
marburg is a level 4 biohazard not some amped-up flue like wuhan–as with ebola, experience with marburg (and with ebola) has shown an average mortality rate (in humans) of 85% or higher–it is no joke–doesn’t care about the $$$, the narrative, the border, the ideology–it just kills
Somebody can take the hemorrhagic genes from Marburg and put them in a coronavirus so it can spread through the air. A project for Fauci to pursue in his retirement.
only if the PRC pay him enough
An mRNA edited Marburg virus? That def sounds like something the psychopathic billionaire’s club ordered up. Gotta make mo’ money while exterminating useless eaters around the globe. Make the disease, make a useless vaxx, mandate meds that exterminate patients.
I guess Marburg, like Ebola, was named before 2015 so it’s allowed to continue to be named after a location. In 2015 the WHO decided not to allow that any more, because it’s terribly racist, doncha know. Why are all these diseases named after places in Africa or Asia, not Eur… Oh, wait, where’s Marburg again? (Thurn & Taxis players know the answer to this)
Where did German measles come from?
We should just kill off bats.
Although, that would really screw us over with insects.
Plus, what would Pfizer do with all their rabies vaccine?
There are always skunks in California as they used to be a primary carrier. I don’t know if that is still true as so many of them keep getting elected…
The way I understand it, the only way to deal with Marburg virus is quarantine. Like Ebola.
Basically correct. There are no reliable antivirals available, but the direct-contact spread mechanism means that isolation and protection from fluids/droplets is generally sufficient.
Which is good, because this is a truly ugly disease. Fortunately, it’s so virulent that (as noted below) it tends to burn out before it can spread widely.
1/ The prevailing sentiment re hemorrhagic viruses is that the high mortality rate causes the virus to burn out quicker than a flu or respiratory virus, which limits the spread. The “experts” don’t believe that anymore?
2/ Are the depop advocates standing by ready to spread Marburg across the globe? In places where taking temps due to fear of covid has waned, this is the perfect segue leading to transmission of Marburg without detection. As we learned during the Obama administration, diseases like Ebola (and Marburg) can’t be contained by borders any longer. Someone check pharma news and stock tips pages for Marburg vaxxes and meds. The usual coven of sociopathic billionaires are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of new earnings.