The CDC has replaced two top leaders of its Ebola response team, Medpage Today reported July 29.
Incident manager Satish Pillai, MD, and deputy incident manager Peggy Honein, PhD, were replaced by Henry Walke, MD, who is the director of the CDC’s Office of Readiness and Response. A CDC spokesperson told the news outlet that Drs. Pillai and Honein are taking “well-desereve time away after months of working extremely long days, seven days a week.”
However, sources inside the CDC told Medpage that these leaders and at least one chief of staff were removed due to suspicions that one of them leaked information about 13 American citizens being detained after trying to return from Congo.
The story first appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. According to the report, 13 U.S. citizens who were traveling over the border by land from Canada were apprehended and detained — though Reuters reported there were actually 14 Americans. All had been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but had been assessed by CDC clinicians and deemed to have no high-risk exposures. Reuters reported the Americans were being quarantined for four days.
Here are four other Ebola updates.
1. A KFF report which compared the U.S. response to the current outbreak to two of the prior largest outbreaks in 2014-2015 and 2018-2020 found that the speed of the U.S. government’s response is on par with the prior two outbreaks and the U.S. funding amounts already surpassed the prior two outbreaks, with $375 million pledged in the first two months of the current outbreak. However, there are significant differences in the U.S. organizational structure and approach due to cuts made last year. Past responses were led by the U.S. Agency for International Development, but the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy and Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response under the State Department now head the response. In the past, the U.S. directly engaged with the World Health Organization, but after leaving WHO membership last year, the U.S. is not formally coordinating with the agency. Read more here.
2. Ugandan authorities declared the country is now Ebola-free, ABC News reported July 28. The last Ebola patient was discharged in mid-June. Usually, a country must wait 42-days without a new infection to be declared Ebola-free, however this outbreak was isolated to a fully documented importation event, the health ministry said. The country was able to declare Ebola-free early due to all contacts being identified, and quarantined without evidence of further transmission. The country had a total of 20 confirmed cases and 2 deaths.
3. Ebola deaths in Congo have now exceeded 1,500, marking a 50% increase in about a week, and there are now 3,442 confirmed cases. It is now the second largest Ebola outbreak recorded. United Nations officials are warning the Ebola response needs to expand three- to fivefold as the risk for cross-border spread grows, Bloomberg reported July 30.
4. The CDC launched an Ebola micro-learn resource to help front-line healthcare workers prepare and train to treat patients with suspected Ebola. The agency confirmed the risk to the U.S. is low.
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