CDC Sending Team to Africa in Wake of Marburg Virus Outbreak

CDC Sending Team to Africa in Wake of Marburg Virus Outbreak

In February, I reported that The World Health Organization (WHO) convened an urgent meeting due to an outbreak of an Ebola-like, hemorrhagic pathogen known as the Marburg Virus in Equatorial Guinea.

Concerns have been sparked, as there was a second outbreak of the virus, and the one in Equatorial Guinea has yet to be controlled.

One of the two outbreaks, in Tanzania in East Africa, seems to have been brought under control, with just two people left in quarantine. But in the other, in Equatorial Guinea on the west coast, spread of the virus is ongoing, and the World Health Organization said last week that the country was not being transparent in reporting cases.

There are no treatments or vaccines for Marburg, but there are some candidates that have shown promise in Phase 1 clinical trials. However these candidates must be tested in active outbreaks to prove they work, and so far, no vaccine supplies have been delivered to test in the current outbreaks.

“The moment an outbreak is detected there should be a mechanism of moving in quickly,” said Dr. John Amuasi, the head of the global health department at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana who investigated a Marburg outbreak in that country last year.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is sending personnel to Africa to help try and contain the spread, which has claimed the lives of 12 people so far in this outbreak. The agency is placing warnings about symptoms at international airports.

The agency is sending its National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases to two regions on opposite sides of the country where the disease is spreading.

The CDC also plans to post notices in international airports warning them about the symptoms of the disease.

Though the CDC hasn’t implemented any travel restrictions, the WHO is warning against “any travel and trade restrictions” with either Guinea or Tanzania.

Guinea was the first to report the disease on February 7 — The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Equatorial Guinea revealed that eight people had died in two separate villages all on the same day.

The agency reported 20 probable cases and one additional death as of March 21.

The virus first came to world attention when outbreaks in Belgrade, Serbia, and Germany’s Frankfurt and Marburg were attributed to a pathogen spread via medical work using African green monkeys imported from Uganda.

It can also be spread via intimate contact, as with monkeypox.

Since its first outbreak, the virus has had outbreaks in Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. The most recent outbreaks were in Guinea in 2021 and Ghana in 2022. The most deaths occurred in Angola, between 2004 and 2005, when 227 people died out of 252 cases.

Death rates have varied between 24 and 88 percent in past outbreaks, the WHO says, depending on the strain of the virus and how the cases were managed, but the average was around 50 percent.

Between humans, the virus is transmitted via the contact of broken skin or mucous membranes with infected body fluids, including urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk, amniotic fluid and semen, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even if a man has recovered from the virus, his semen can still spread the disease if he has unprotected sex, as the virus has been found to persist inside the testicles. Additionally, the virus can be spread via objects contaminated with the body fluids of an infected person, such as clothes, bedding and needles.

“First responders and family members with an infected member are most at risk,” Demetrius Matassov, director of viral vaccine development at Auro Vaccines, told Newsweek. “[Marburg virus disease] doesn’t spread like COVID.

Let’s hope that the “experts” manage to get this outbreak under control before the June 2023 Gay Pride Month starts.

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