Infectious Disease

New Ebola cases in Guinea related to the West African epidemic are cause for concern

March 15, 2021

2 min read

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Disclosure:
Kuppalli reports that he is a member of an advisory board for GlaxoSmithKline.

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A genetic analysis has linked a new Ebola outbreak in Guinea to the West African Ebola epidemic, which ended in 2016.

“It has been 5 years since the outbreak occurred in West Africa. This tells us a lot about what we need to learn about the dynamics of transmission, and beyond that, how Ebola virus disease works or how we understand the pathogenesis of the virus becomes.” Krutika Kuppalli, MD, on Healio said, an assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina, vice chairman of the Global Health Committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and an emerging biosafety fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Krutika Kuppalli

“We don’t know if the person who got it was exposed to someone who had it before, or if they might have been infected before and had the disease recurrence. Maybe they had a slight infection before, ”said Kuppalli. “I think it shows us that we still have a lot to learn about the disease, its pathogenesis and the dynamics of transmission.”

According to a pre-release post on Virological.org, the current outbreak was caused by the Makona strain of the Zaire Ebola virus – the same that caused the West African epidemic that infected more than 28,000 people and killed more than 11,300 people in the largest outbreak of the disease ever.

In the Post, researchers reported that they discovered common mutations between the virus at the center of the current outbreak and the one that caused the epidemic years ago. “Mak[ing] It is unlikely that the new cases were due to a renewed overflow from the animal reservoir, but are directly related to human cases in the 2013-2016 Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa. “

The first possible cases of the new outbreak were reported in late January, and health officials declared an outbreak shortly afterwards. It was the first outbreak in the region since the West African epidemic.

Around the same time last month, on February 7, the WHO declared a separate outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). As of March 14, there have been reported 18 cases and nine deaths in the Guinea outbreak and 12 cases and five deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo outbreak. According to the WHO, vaccinations were carried out in both outbreak areas. So far, 3,176 people in Guinea and 1,475 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been vaccinated.

Kuppalli said flares related to previous outbreaks may create problems for Ebola survivors.

“This has a huge impact on the potential stigma for them. This could lead to some kind of new round of stigmatization if people are worried about being with people who previously had Ebola and getting it from them, ”said Kuppalli. “We have to think about it and be very aware of it. That’s another reason we really need to understand what happened here. “

Kuppalli said the results of the analysis further show how much more research is needed on Ebola and other emerging diseases.

“There will always be a curveball, there will always be new information,” said Kuppalli. “It’s another example of why investing in understanding these infections is so important, and why it’s important to invest in developing these survival cohorts and things like that.”

References:

Virological.org. Guinea 2021 EBOV outbreak. https://virological.org/t/guinea-2021-ebov-outbreak/643. Accessed March 15, 2021.

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