France has confirmed its first ever case of Ebola after a humanitarian aid physician returned from helping in the Democratic Republic of Congo, The New York Times reported June 24.
Here are six Ebola outbreak updates:
1. The French physician has been admitted to a special healthcare facility and is in stable condition, according to the country’s health ministry. Health workers are working to trace anyone who came into contact with the physician and closely monitor them in isolation. The risk of infection for the wider European population was low, the European CDC said. Before this case, the only active Ebola case in Europe was the American physician who was transferred to Germany for treatment. He has since returned to the U.S.
2. Kenya’s health cabinet secretary on June 23 ordered construction halted on a U.S.-backed Ebola quarantine facility for Americans, a day after a court held him in contempt for letting work continue in defiance of an earlier order, ABC News reported. The 50-bed facility at Laikipia Air Base, about 125 miles north of Nairobi, anchored a Trump administration plan to route Americans exposed to Ebola abroad away from U.S. soil. Asymptomatic exposed citizens would be quarantined in Kenya, and those who tested positive would be evacuated to Europe rather than returned home, administration officials have said. Kenya’s Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale appeared before Kenya’s High Court in Nairobi and directed an immediate stop to all construction and site work. The court accepted Mr. Duale’s apology and discharged him with a warning that he would face sentencing if he defied its orders again. A Kenyan court in May ordered construction halted while it weighs a challenge from the Law Society of Kenya and the Katiba Institute, which contend the facility risks importing the virus and was set up without public consultation, according to ABC News. Work continued despite the order, and at least two people died in subsequent protests. The injunction now runs until a July 23 hearing. The dispute leaves the U.S. strategy for exposed Americans unclear. Infectious disease leaders have urged the administration to use the nation’s existing biocontainment network, which they called purpose-built for such cases, rather than triaging patients abroad. The approach marks a departure from 2014, when several infected Americans were treated in U.S. biocontainment units.
3. Congo’s health ministry said the current Ebola outbreak has symptoms milder than previous outbreaks. About 90% of patients do not seem to develop extensive internal and external bleeding associated with Ebola’s end stages. Early data also suggests the death rate is lower compared to previous outbreaks. Although this is good news for patients, milder symptoms could make it harder to control spread and end the outbreak, The New York Times reported June 23.
4. The current Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak is three times larger than any previous Ebola outbreak four weeks after being declared a public health emergency. Congo has logged at least 1,048 confirmed cases and 267 deaths, after cases jumped 38% in one week. Uganda has reported 20 cases and two deaths.
5. The World Health Organization said it believes the outbreak started in Mongbwalu in Congo, a gold-mining town of about 130,000 people located in Itury province, though this has not been fully confirmed.
6. A recent study from researchers at New York City-based Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine found that the Ebola virus can survive unnoticed in the body for months or years after an infection. The study, published in Nature Microbiology, found that infectious Ebola virus can be detected in semen for up to a year after infection, and also persists in other immune-privileged organs such as the central nervous system and brain. The persistent viral presence can increase the risk of inflammatory disease and relapses in patients.
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