Second Ebola patient identified in Kenya
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Second Ebola patient identified in Kenya
Second Ebola patient identified in Kenya
Chris Dall, MA42 minutes ago.
Ebola
Kenyan health officials have reported a second Ebola case in the country, raising new concerns that the ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could spread to neighboring countries.
According to a press release from Kenya’s Ministry of Health, the patient is a 39-year-old man and a close family member of the first case-patient, a Kenyan national who had been living in the DRC and died on October 5 after returning to Kenya and testing positive for the Bundibugyo strain of the virus. The relative fell ill on October 13 and has been under quarantine and close daily monitoring since.
“He is now in a designated treatment centre, where trained teams are giving him supportive care,” said Patrick Amoth, MBBS, Kenya’s director general for health. “Early supportive care improves his chances of recovery, and isolating him at first symptom limits the chance of passing the virus to others.”
Amoth said Kenyan officials have traced 113 of the initial case patient’s 128 contacts and that there is no evidence of wider spread in the community. He said the public should “stay calm but remain vigilant.”
Meanwhile, the outbreak in DRC continues to grow. According to data published yesterday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 9,167 cases have been confirmed in the DRC, with 4,413 deaths. Nearly all cases and deaths have been in the DRC, where officials have faced multiple challenges, including limited healthcare infrastructure, ongoing conflict in the region, frequent population movement, and public mistrust.
The Ebola outbreak is the 17th in the DRC and is growing significantly faster than the country’s 2018 outbreak and the 2014-16 West Africa outbreak.
“This outbreak is spreading substantially faster than previous Ebola outbreaks and is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record,” the CDC said.
The burden of controlling the outbreak has fallen heavily on healthcare workers in DRC, who have been dealing with violence, poor working conditions, and low pay. In response, a health workers’ union in DRC is threatening a nationwide strike, according to reporting by the German news service DPA. The union is demanding higher pay, better working conditions, and hazard allowances.
Vaccine induces T-cell responses against Bundibugyo
In some positive news, a team of German researchers say they’ve found that the only licensed Ebola vaccine, Merck’s Ervebo (VSV-EBOV), induces T-cell cross-reactivity against the Bundibugyo virus (BDBV), which has no licensed vaccines or treatments.Approved in 2019, Ervebo targets the Zaire strain of Ebola and was used in the 2018 DRC Ebola outbreak. While studies in non-human primates and Ervebo-vaccinated individuals have shown partial cross-protection and antibody responses against Bundibugyo, it remains unknown if these responses are enough to protect people who’ve been infected.
T-cell response could be a stronger indication the vaccine may be effective against BDBV, according to a team led by researchers from the German Center for Infection Research.
“Virus-specific T-cell responses are associated with virus control and protection against severe disease,” the researchers reported this week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
In their analysis of 20 recipients of the Ervebo vaccine at 28 days after immunization, the researchers found that 13 had T-cell responses specific to BDBV glycoproteins, which share 66% amino-acid identity with Ebola virus (EBOV) proteins. Most recipients with a positive EBOV–glycoprotein-specific T-cell response also had BDBV-reactive T-cells. Ervebo also induced some cross-reactivity against the Sudan Ebola strain.
In August, the World Health Organization announced the allocation of 70,000 doses of Ervebo to help combat the outbreak—20,000 to be used in a phase 3 trial and 50,000 for frontline healthcare workers. Other BDBV-specific vaccine candidates are in early-stage clinical trials.
“In the absence of a BDBV-specific vaccine, these data support the systematic evaluation of the available EBOV vaccine within clinical trials during the current outbreak,” the study authors wrote.