Ebola

Better Ebola testing in West Africa would save lives and could help bring an end to the outbreak

The dying at the tin-roofed clinic in the rural Kono district of Sierra Leone comes at a ruthless pace. In the first two weeks of October, 20 out of the 22 patients seeking treatment for Ebola died. That fatality rate, high even by the lethal standards of Ebola, could easily be brought down, says Dan Kelly, an infectious-disease doctor who is currently in Kono with the Wellbody Alliance, a medical nonprofit organisation he set up eight years ago. “The ability to test for Ebola, to test quickly, has become ever more important,” says Kelly, who believes the high death toll in the Kono clinic was due in part to the fact that there is no place to test for Ebola in the entire district. Instead, blood samples from suspected Ebola patients have to be sent to the capital over rutted mud roads that are often washed out by rain. “Even if we have the best treatments available, without a timely diagnosis people are still going to die,” says Kelly.

Work out quickly who does and does not have Ebola and you’ll get a long way toward stopping an outbreak that has killed at least 4,877 and infected thousands more. Right now that simple proposition can feel like a fantasy. In Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the three countries with the most cases, the need for rapid test results far outpaces the capacity to carry them out.

That means patients often aren’t getting treatment until it’s too late, when the disease has ravaged their bodies beyond repair, and when they may have already infected friends and family. “If patients are promptly diagnosed and receive aggressive supportive care, the great majority, as many as 90%, should survive,” wrote the global health expert Paul Farmer in a recent issue of the London Review of Books.

Even in a top U.S. laboratory it can take up to eight hours to search a blood sample for Ebola through an expensive and complex array of technical hardware and computer software called a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. military have helped by setting up four additional labs in West Africa over the past six months—Liberia now has a total of five, Sierra Leone four and Guinea three—but capacity is still limited to about 100 tests per lab per day, not nearly enough to cope with an epidemic that could grow to 10,000 new cases a week by December, according to the World Health Organization. Laurie Garrett, an expert on Ebola at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, says that number could be brought down through better testing. “The only thing that makes a dent when you model what is going on with the epidemic now and what it looks like in two months, is being able to separate the infected from the non-infected.”

Health care workers on the ground say that more PCR labs are urgently needed. “Crushing this epidemic means getting 70% of the population with Ebola into isolation and care,” Kelly says. That could be achieved, he believes, by putting a PCR lab in every district.

The challenges don’t stop there. Testing can create risks even as it offers solutions. Medical personnel must draw blood from patients for a PCR test, a potentially lethal process for caregivers. “Taking samples is extremely dangerous,” says Dr. Estrella Lasry, a tropical medicine adviser in Liberia for Doctors Without Borders (MSF). “At any time you risk a needlestick injury that can expose you to the virus.”

And then there’s the risk that patients without Ebola are being exposed to patients with the disease. Lasry estimates that 30% to 50% of people coming into the MSF clinics end up testing negative for Ebola and instead have other illnesses like malaria that have similar early symptoms. All those being tested for Ebola must wait in holding centers for their results, to ensure they don’t have an opportunity to infect others back at home if they test positive. That means patients with other illnesses must wait among patients with Ebola, increasing the chances of transmission.

Kelly hopes researchers can develop a test that could give readings at a clinic immediately and wouldn’t require trained technicians to interpret the results. “It would be a game changer if you could immediately identify patients needing quarantine from those who do not,” he says. Several versions of so-called point-of-care rapid diagnostic tests are already in development, but while some are at the testing stage, it is not clear when they could actually be used on the ground.

One U.S. company, Corgenix, received a $2.9 million grant in June from the National Institutes of Health to perfect its prototype, a pregnancy-test-style slip of paper that reveals a dark red line within 15 minutes when exposed to a drop of Ebola-infected blood. Instead of needles and syringes, test takers need only a pinprick to get the sample, much like an insulin test for diabetes patients. These tests, which would cost anywhere from $2 to $10 (PCR tests average about $100 each) could also be used in airports to confirm whether someone with symptoms has Ebola.

If the Corgenix test had been available, says one of its lead researchers, Robert F. Garry, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, it might have helped diagnose Amber Vinson, an American nurse infected with Ebola, before she boarded a flight from Cleveland to Dallas on Oct. 13. “This is a test that could be used anywhere you would want to test for Ebola,” says Garry. “Anyone could use it, and anyone could read it.”

With the epidemic worsening in West Africa, medical staff in Ebola-hit countries can’t afford to wait for companies like Corgenix to bring their product to market. Kelly has been hearing about better, faster tests almost since he started working on Ebola in June. He fears that pinning hopes on future technologies undermines efforts to ramp up testing facilities. “Everyone says they have a new test, but at this point I’m like, ‘Show me the money,’” says Kelly. “ We already have a working technology that is deployable. Get me a PCR in every district capital, and then we can start talking about faster tests.”

Garry says he has people in every U.S. time zone working “as fast as humanly possible” to get the Corgenix test out. “We want to make an impact on this outbreak,” he says. “With enough tests, we can shut it down it down.” Without them, Ebola may be here to stay.

Ebola survivor and NBC freelancer Ashoka Mukpo says “today is a joyful day,” in a statement he released Wednesday about his recovery.

Mukpo, who was infected with Ebola while working in Liberia, was evacuated to Nebraska Medical Center for treatment. “I owe this staff a debt I can’t ever repay,” said Mukpo in a statement.

The fact that Mukpo was able to be treated in America is a circumstance that weighs on him, he writes: “I feel profoundly blessed to be alive, and in the same breath aware of the global inequalities that allowed me to be flown to an American hospital when so many Liberians die alone with minimal care.” He thanked everyone from the United States State Department, to Doctors Without Borders to NBC.

He paid a special thanks to fellow survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, who donated blood to Mukpo. “May his health flourish and his compassion be known to all,” said Mukpo.

Mukpo was declared free of Ebola and released from the hospital on Oct. 21. It’s unclear how exactly he was infected with the disease. Mukpo says he plans to discuss his experience in writing, and will talk to media, but for now he is spending time with his family and asks for privacy.

You can read his full statement here.

Experts point to strong national health systems and proper contact tracing

Though a few cases of Ebola in the U.S. and Europe have sparked panic that the deadly virus is spreading far and wide, a closer look at the outbreak in West Africa tells a slightly different story. The epidemic, which the World Health Organization reports has claimed at least 4,877 lives, largely in West Africa, has so far been mainly confined to three countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. But why have others like Guinea-Bissau, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire — which all share at least one border with a badly afflicted country — so far managed to avoid any cases of the virus?

“Part of it is still luck of the draw, due to movement of people and the relatively porous nature of borders,” says Aboubacry Tall, West Africa Regional Director for Oxfam. And the threat seemingly posed by open borders has led to the affected countries gradually sealing themselves off to prevent Ebola from being passed on to neighbors. When the first cases were confirmed in March by Guinea’s Ministry of Health, Senegal decided to close its southern border with the country. As the outbreak spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia, more border closures followed: Sierra Leone shut its borders on June 11 and Liberia did the same on July 27, with the exception of a few major entry points (such as the main airport) where screening centers would be set up.

Greg Rose, a health advisor at the British Red Cross, says that while border controls may have had “a small effect” on the situation in West Africa, a key difference “was that that other countries had been forewarned,” which allowed them to “set up systems to prevent further infections.” Moreover, Tall says that “in neighboring countries like Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Mali, the health systems were in a slightly better shape.” In comparison, the three most-affected countries already had overburdened health care infrastructure before the Ebola outbreak. Sierra Leone and Liberia had not yet fully recovered from the damaging effects of long civil wars — Sierra Leone had two doctors per 100,000 people and Liberia had only one, whereas Mali had eight and Côte d’Ivoire had 14. (The U.S. has 242.) With a lack of staff and resources, Tall says, “Ebola came in and rapidly overwhelmed the health systems” in the three countries, which have now collectively seen more than 9,900 cases of the virus.

Tall adds that two key elements in containing the spread in neighboring countries are community mobilization and the preparedness of the public health system. He highlights the importance of “raising public awareness on Ebola” and of putting the medical system “on high alert all the way to border areas, so that anything that looks like a suspect case has a higher chance of being picked up.” The difference made by a rapid response can be seen in Senegal’s success with its one Ebola case. Despite closing its border, Senegal reported its first case on Aug. 29, after a a Guinean university student traveled by road to Dakar, the capital. He was treated and recovered, and his contacts were traced and monitored. On Oct. 17, WHO declared the outbreak in Senegal officially over, saying the “most important lesson for the world at large is this: an immediate, broad-based, and well-coordinated response can stop the Ebola virus dead in its tracks.”

Though not a bordering country, Nigeria suffered an outbreak of 20 cases — including eight deaths — after a Liberian-American man died of Ebola after arriving at the main airport in Lagos. However, the government of Africa’s most populous nation was able to successfully trace those in contact with him and has since been declared Ebola-free. Nigeria has kept its borders open to travelers from the most affected countries, but increased surveillance. Dr. Faisal Shuaib, of the country’s Ebola Emergency Operation Center, recently told TIME that “closing borders tends to reinforce panic and the notion of helplessness. When you close the legal points of entry, then you potentially drive people to use illegal passages, thus compounding the problem.”

Shuaib pointed out that closing borders has another unwelcome effect: it stifles commercial activities in countries whose economies are already struggling because of the Ebola crisis. “Access to food has become a pressing concern for many people in the three affected countries and their neighbors,” Bukar Tijani, a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization representative, said in September. In Liberia, for example, the collapse of cross-border trade meant that the price of cassava — a food staple — jumped 150% in early August. Another immediate consequence of travel restrictions, says Tall, is that “most airlines have stopped flying to these countries, which makes it more difficult for humanitarian personnel to get in and out.”

The most effective way to contain the spread of Ebola is in “proper tracing of the epidemic, containment within communities and caring for those infected,” says Rose, the Red Cross advisor, who believes “this problem is not going to be solved by closing borders.” And though Ebola has not spread quickly beyond Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, it’s clear that neighboring countries in West Africa need to remain vigilant. As Tall says, “we’re not out of the woods yet.”

Travelers will be monitored for 21 days upon arrival in the U.S.

All travelers entering the United States from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone will now be actively monitored for Ebola-like symptoms by state and local health officials for 21 days upon landing in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Wednesday. Those three West African countries are the hardest-hit by a recent outbreak of the deadly disease, and about 150 people travel from them to the U.S. every day.

CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden announced the new program as the U.S. began requiring travelers from those three countries to arrive in the country through one of five airports performing intensive screening procedures. The new monitoring program will start on Monday in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Georgia, the six states where most travelers from the three countries end their trips.

When travelers from the three West African countries arrive in the U.S., they will be given an explanatory kit that includes a thermometer and will be asked to provide two email addresses, two telephone numbers, a home address and an address for the next 21 days. They will also need to provide the same information for a family member or friend. Travelers will be asked to report to a public health worker from a state or local health department daily, providing a temperature as well as well reporting any symptoms. They must also inform officials if they plan to travel, and if so, they must coordinate their tracking their symptoms with health officials.

“We have to keep up our guard against Ebola,” said Frieden, adding that it’s the “CDC’s mission is to protect Americans.”

Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline, two of the world's largest drugmakers, are already working together to make vaccine doses

The world’s leading drugmakers are collaborating to develop millions of doses of an Ebola vaccine for use next year, aiming to prevent West Africans and frontline healthcare workers from contracting the deadly virus.

Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday that its goal is to produce 1 million doses of a two-step vaccine next year, and is already collaborating with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline, Reuters reports.

The two companies could combine their vaccines and support each other’s work, while other companies are volunteering to provide production capacity. “I have spoken with (GlaxoSmithKline chief executive) Andrew Witty over the past few days several times as colleagues on how we are going to solve this,” Johnson & Johnson U.S. research chief Stoffels told reporters. “It might even be that we have to combine their vaccine with ours.”

The World Health Organization wants tens of thousands of people in West Africa, including frontline healthcare workers, to start receiving Ebola vaccines in January as part of clinical trials.

[Reuters]

Ashoka Mukpo was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 2 while working in Liberia

An American journalist who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia is officially clear of the virus, the hospital where he was treated said Tuesday.

The Nebraska Medical Center made the announcement of NBC freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo’s recovery after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed his blood test no longer showed presence of the virus, according to NBC News. The 33-year-old, who arrived at the hospital on Oct. 6 after being evacuated from Liberia, will now be allowed to leave his isolation unit and return home to Rhode Island, the hospital said.

“Recovering from Ebola is a truly humbling feeling,” Mukpo told the hospital. “Too many are not as fortunate and lucky as I’ve been. I’m very happy to be alive.”

As part of his treatment, Mukpo had received a blood donation from Dr. Kent Brantly, the first American to be diagnosed with Ebola and who was also treated at the Nebraska Medical Center, in addition to an experimental drug called brincidofovir.

The photojournalist was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 2 in Liberia, making him the fourth American to contract the virus. That number has since risen to eight Americans who have developed the deadly disease in an outbreak that has claimed over 4,500 lives, according to the World Health Organization.

The only Ebola fatality in the U.S. thus far has been that of Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian who died in Dallas on Oct. 8. Meanwhile, an unnamed patient and two Dallas nurses, Amber Vinson and Nina Pham, remain in treatment, according to CNN. Pham’s condition was upgraded from “fair” to “good” Tuesday, while Vinson’s mom told ABC Tuesday that her daughter is “doing OK, just trying to get stronger.”

[NBC News]

Nina Pham was previously listed in "fair" condition

The clinical status of the first of two Dallas nurses to contract Ebola has been upgraded from “fair” to “good,” the National Institute of Health (NIH) said Tuesday.

Nina Pham, 26, had been transferred Thursday to the NIH Special Clinical Studies Unit in Maryland, where a doctor said in a statement that she was in fair condition and resting comfortably. The NIH also said that Pham has expressed gratitude for her well-wishers, but that “no additional details are available at this time.”

The unit where Pham is being treated has a staff of 50 to 60 personnel who are trained to deal with biohazards like the Ebola virus, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Friday. While Fauci did not disclose Pham’s treatment plan, he revealed that Pham had already received plasma donated from Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly.

Pham, who last week released a tearful video from inside her Texas isolation unit, is the first known person to develop Ebola within the United States. Pham contracted the virus at Dallas’ Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. Duncan died of the virus Oct. 8.

A second Dallas nurse who worked alongside Pham in Duncan’s treatment was also diagnosed with Ebola two days after Pham’s diagnosis.

Fliers from Ebola-affected countries must travel to New York, Newark, Washington, Atlanta or Chicago

The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that airline passengers traveling to the United States from the the countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak must travel through one of five U.S. airports, where they will undergo screening.

The new restrictions take effect Wednesday and expand on a previous requirement that passengers whose travel plans originate in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone must undergo screening if they arrive at airports in New York, Newark, Washington, Atlanta or Chicago. Now, passengers must modify their itinerary to ensure they arrive at one of the five airports where they can be screened.

Though the tighter security measure is symbolically significant, it will likely only impact a small minority of travelers who arrive in the U.S. from West Africa. More than 9o% of passengers from the affected countries already arrive at those five airports via air connections in Europe or elsewhere in Africa. There are currently no direct flights from Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone to the U.S.

In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that the agency would continue monitoring the situation to determine whether additional restrictions are necessary.