Ebola spread in central Africa could match 2014 record outbreak, US health officials say | Africa
The Ebola outbreak in Central Africa could spread on a scale similar to the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa, which was the worst outbreak in history and killed more than 11,000 people, according to a new analysis by U.S. health officials.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday released a series of scenarios from 10,000 to more than 20,000 cases generated by computer models. More than 28,000 cases have been reported in the West African outbreak.
The CDC’s analysis said cases could rise to 20,000 or more, depending on how quickly infected people are isolated to slow the spread.
Dr Satish Pillai, incident manager for the CDC’s Ebola response, said “modeling work shows that an outbreak of this scale is possible” without strong public health interventions.
Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s US Pandemic Center, said the modeling “confirms what we’ve been worried about all along: this pandemic is on a dangerous course unless more is done to stop its spread.”
But he warned that it can be extremely difficult to predict how epidemics will progress. “I’m not going to get too much into specific numbers. It’s really hard to make an accurate prediction when you have limited data,” he said.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday there were nearly 400 confirmed cases, including 63 deaths. Experts say there are likely other cases that have gone undiagnosed or unreported.
The viruses that cause Ebola are spread through contact with body fluids such as vomit, blood, and semen. There is no specific treatment or vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, which is at the center of the current outbreak. The disease is often fatal.
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency in May. Some experts believe the infections may have occurred in February, but health officials initially tested for a different type of Ebola virus.
The outbreak response has been complicated by armed conflict between the Congolese government and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, as well as attacks by the Islamic State-affiliated group Allied Democratic Force. Authorities say the violence has led to mass displacement of people living in conflict zones.
The CDC’s modeling report attempts to predict how things might develop based on different factors, such as how many infections and deaths have already occurred and how quickly responders can identify and isolate infected people before they spread the infection to others.
Pillai said the actual isolation rate is unknown but is considered to be at the “lower end of the scenarios” the CDC has modeled.
CDC officials said higher isolation rates of 50% or 70% could lead to the number of cases being closer to 10,000. But CDC officials said the results could be worse if the true number of deaths in late May is higher than currently known.
Some CDC modeling during the massive Ebola outbreak in West Africa turned out to be too far off. The CDC published sample figures in 2014, when the epidemic was spiraling out of control and international health officials were trying to quickly mount a response.
It is estimated that in a worse-case scenario where nothing is done, as many as 1.4 million people could be infected. This turned out to be 50 times more than what happened.
