Ebola Epidemic Spreads, Worsens

As the Ebola virus continues its deadly march through West Africa, keeping track of developments can be a challenge. Here's a roundup of the latest news this week:

The Toll

The World Health Organization updated figures Wednesday. The total number of cases — including those considered confirmed, probable or suspected — now stands at 1,711. This includes 932 deaths.

To put that into perspective: Until this year, the world had recorded 1,640 deaths from Ebola since the virus was discovered in 1976. Now more than a third of all people known to have died from the virus, in history, have died in the current outbreak.

There's also worrisome evidence that the outbreak's strength is growing. More than 100 of the cases this year, or about 6 percent of the total, were reported between Saturday and Monday. And 20 percent of all cases were reported over the last week, from Monday, July 28 through Monday, August 4.

The Locations

Nearly all cases have been in the three West African countries at the epicenter of the crisis: Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. New cases have been roughly divided between the latter two.

But in another alarming development, the WHO is now nine cases in Nigeria. The Nigerian government has also reported a second death from Ebola — a nurse who treated the first person to die there, a Liberian-American man, named Patrick Sawyer.

Sawyer apparently contracted Ebola in Liberia and then boarded a plane for Nigeria's capital, Lagos, a city with more than 20 million people. He died soon after in a Lagos hospital.

Nigerian officials had initially stated that Sawyer was identified as a possible Ebola patient at the airport and immediately isolated. But the Lagos state health commissioner conceded Tuesday that, in fact, more than 24 hours had passed before hospital staff recognized Sawyer might have Ebola and took precautionary measures, the Associated Press Wednesday.

Five other people who came into contact with Sawyer are now sick with Ebola, Nigerian officials added. And they're following up with others who were exposed to Sawyer.

Saudi Arabia is also testing for a possible first case: a Saudi man who fell ill after returning from Sierra Leone, Reuters . He died Wednesday.

Liberia's Minister of Internal Affairs said a Liberian man died of Ebola in Morocco last month. However, the Moroccan government has that the man died of a heart attack, and that tests confirmed he never had Ebola.

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Top Sierra Leone Doctor Fighting Ebola Contracts Disease After 3 Nurses Die

The head doctor fighting the deadly tropical virus Ebola in Sierra Leone has himself caught the disease, the government said.

The 39-year-old Sheik Umar Khan, hailed as a "national hero" by the health ministry, was leading the fight to control an outbreak that has killed 206 people in the West African country. Ebola kills up to 90 percent of those infected and there is no cure or vaccine.

Across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, more than 600 people have died from the illness, according to the World Health Organisation, placing great strain on the health systems of some of Africa's poorest countries.

Khan, a Sierra Leonean virologist credited with treating more than 100 Ebola victims, has been transferred to a treatment ward run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, according to the statement released late on Tuesday by the president's office.

Health Minister Miatta Kargbo called Khan a national hero and said she would "do anything and everything in my power to ensure he survives".

Khan told Reuters in late June that he was worried about contracting Ebola. "I am afraid for my life, I must say, because I cherish my life," he said in an interview, showing no signs of ill health at the time.

"Health workers are prone to the disease because we are the first port of call for somebody who is sickened by disease. Even with the full protective clothing you put on, you are at risk."

Three days ago, three nurses working in the same Ebola treatment centre alongside Khan died from the disease.

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Middle East Respiratory Syndrome may be Airborne

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, better known as MERS, may be an airborne virus, according to an observation paper published Tuesday in the journal mBio.

There have been 836 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infection since its first appearance in 2012, according to the latest numbers provided by the World Health Organization. At least 288 related deaths have officially been reported to the WHO.

Scientists are still trying to figure out how the deadly virus is transmitted.

Researchers from King Fahd Medical Research Center in Saudi Arabia collected three air samples from a camel barn. Previously, they had found MERS in a camel from that barn and in its infected owner, who later died from the condition. After analyzing the air sample, the scientists found one strain of MERS RNA, the viral genome.

Interestingly, the barn air tested positive for MERS on the exact same day that one of the nine camels in the barn tested positive for MERS. Also, the virus from the air sample was identical to the virus found in nasal samples from the infected camel and its owner.

"These data show evidence for the presence of the airborne MERS in the same barn that was owned by the patient and sheltered the infected camels," the study authors write.

But does that mean MERS is easily transmitted through the air?

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At least 288 have died and 834 people have been infected with the MERS virus.

Ebola Outbreak Rages on With Over 567 Cases & 350 Deaths

The deadly Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has hit "unprecedented" proportions, according to relief workers on the ground.

"The epidemic is out of control," Dr. Bart Janssens, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement.

There have been 567 cases and 350 deaths since the epidemic began in March, according to the latest World Health Organization figures.

In April, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta traveled to Conakry, Guinea, to report on what was being done to treat patients and contain the outbreak.

"It took only moments to feel the impact of what was happening here," Gupta wrote after landing in Conakry. "There is a lot we know about Ebola, and it scares us almost as much as what we don't know."

Ebola outbreaks usually are confined to remote areas, making it easier to contain. But this outbreak is different; patients have been identified in 60 locations in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Officials believe the wide footprint of this outbreak is partly because of the close proximity between the jungle where the virus was first identified and cities such as Conakry. The capital in Guinea has a population of 2 million and an international airport.

People are traveling without realizing they're carrying the deadly virus. It can take between two and 21 days after exposure for someone to feel sick.

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The Man who was Immune to AIDS

via Randy.

First MERS Case Reported From Bangladesh

Bangladesh on Sunday reported its first case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus infection in a man returning from the United States through Abu Dhabi.

The man, 53, was being treated in hospital, said Mahmudur Rahman, of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research.

"Most probably, he contacted the virus while he was in Abu Dhabi in transit on his way back from the United States," Rahman told Reuters.

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Saudi Arabia's Response to MERS Inhibited by Institutional Problems

When Saudi Arabia announced last week it had found 113 more cases of the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), it didn't just force a rethink of the threat the virus poses, it exposed institutional failings.

Saudi health sources and international virologists said poor communication and a lack of accountability in government departments, inadequate state oversight and a failure to learn from past mistakes have all hindered Saudi Arabia's battle against the SARS-like virus.

They say it is too soon to tell if reforms introduced by a new acting health minister can overcome what they see as underlying problems.

Some top Saudi health officials say they accept that delays in reporting MERS cases were caused by poor communication between hospitals, laboratories and government departments, but they stress things have improved significantly since the appointment of the new minister in late April.

The health ministry "has put in place measures to ensure best practices of data gathering, reporting (and) transparency are strictly observed", it says, and "to ensure that from now on, case information will be accurate, reliable and timely".

Saudi Arabia has been host to the vast majority of cases of MERS - a viral infection which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia - since it was first found in humans two years ago.

International concerns over Saudi Arabia's handling of the outbreak grew last week when it said it had under-reported cases by a fifth and revised the case numbers to 688 from 575.

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Gift Which Keeps in Giving: Chimps Gave Homo erectus HERPES 1.6 Million Years ago

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified the evolutionary origins of human herpes simplex virus (HSV) -1 and -2, reporting that the former infected hominids before their evolutionary split from chimpanzees 6 million years ago while the latter jumped from ancient chimpanzees to ancestors of modern humans – Homo erectus – approximately 1.6 million years ago.

The findings are published in the June 10 online issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution.

"The results help us to better understand how these viruses evolved and found their way into humans," said Joel O. Wertheim, PhD, assistant research scientist at the UC San Diego AntiViral Research Center and lead author of the study. "Animal disease reservoirs are extremely important for global public health. Understanding where our viruses come from will help guide us in preventing future viruses from making the jump into humans."

Approximately two-thirds of the human population is infected with at least one herpes simplex virus. The viruses are most commonly presented as cold sores on the mouth or lips or blisters on the genitals.

"Humans are the only primates we know of that have two herpes simplex viruses," said Wertheim. "We wanted to determine why."

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HIV, herpes (HSV-2)...guys, just DON'T do Chimps!  geez!

Saudi Arabia's MERS Death Toll Really 282, not 190

Saudi Arabia's death toll from the MERS coronavirus has surged to 282, the health ministry said Tuesday, following recalculations in the world's worst hit country.

"A comprehensive revision" going back to 2012 has resulted in revising up the death toll, which had stood at 190 people, while the number of infected cases rose from 575 to 688 people, the ministry said in a statement.

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MERS Spreads to Algeria

Algeria reported its first two cases of the deadly MERS virus on Saturday, both among pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia, where most cases and deaths from the disease have been reported.

The two Algerian men, aged 66 and 59, had gone on a pilgrimage to Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia, Algeria's health ministry said without giving further details about their condition.

Other countries including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates and the United States have also recorded cases, mostly in people who had been to Saudi Arabia.

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The Saudi death toll is now 189.  Jordan reports 6.

 It seems some of those who went on the pilgrimage to Mecca, etc. are returning with MERS.

MERS Infections Slow in Saudi Arabia, Iran Reports First Infections

The rate of infection of a deadly virus in Saudi Arabia has slowed since mid May and Monday was the first day free of new cases in six weeks, figures released by the kingdom's Health Ministry showed.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) was discovered in Saudi Arabia two years ago and has since infected 562 people in the kingdom, killing 179 of them. It can cause flu-like symptoms, pneumonia and organ failure in some.

A surge in new cases in April prompted King Abdullah to sack the health minister and led to criticism of infection control procedures in many Saudi hospitals. There were also concerns the government was not taking seriously MERS's link to camels.

Cases have also been discovered in other countries, including the United States, Britain and France and, most recently, in Iran. Most of these cases are linked to people who have recently visited Gulf Arab countries.

In the first two weeks of the month, the daily number of new cases in Saudi Arabia averaged nearly 11, but since May 14 the average number of new confirmed infections has been a little over four a day, the figures show.

Late on Monday the ministry reported its first day free of new confirmed infections since April 13.

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Iran also reports cases.

Saudi MERS Deaths at 173, Infections at 537

Saudi health authorities reported Monday new deaths from the MERS coronavirus, taking to 173 the overall number of fatalities from the disease in the world's worst-hit country.

The health ministry said on its website that five people have died, including a 28-year-old woman in the port city of Jeddah, and a 32-year-old man in northern Tabuk.

A woman aged 69 died in Riyadh and a 55-year-old man died in the city of Mecca, home to Islam's holiest site which is visited by millions of pilgrims each year.

A fifth man, 59 died on Sunday in the western city of Taif.

The ministry said the total numbers of infections has reached 537 case.

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Middle East Respiratory Virus has Infected at Least One Other in USA

Health officials reported Saturday what appears to be the first time that a mysterious Middle East virus has spread from one person to another in the United States.

The Illinois man probably picked up an infection from an Indiana man who earlier this month became the first U.S. case of Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. The Illinois man, however, never needed medical treatment and is reported to be feeling well, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The two men met twice before the Indiana man fell ill and was hospitalized in Munster, Indiana, shortly after traveling from Saudi Arabia, where he lived and was employed as a health care worker. Health officials say they think the virus spread during a 40-minute business meeting that involved no more contact than a handshake.

"We don't think this changes the risk to the general public," which remains low, said Dr. David Swerdlow of the CDC.

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Saudi Deaths From MERS up to 157; Total Saudi Infections now at 511

Saudi Arabia announced Wednesday five new deaths from MERS, raising the death toll in the country worst-hit by the mysterious coronavirus to 157 since it appeared in 2012.

The health ministry also reported 16 new infections with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome raising the total so far to 511.

Three women, all over 60, died in Riyadh, while two men, aged 56 and 57, died in the port city of Jeddah, the ministry said on its website.

Saudi Arabia accounts for by far the largest proportion of the 571 MERS cases worldwide reported to the World Health Organisation, 171 of which have proved fatal.

MERS has also been found in 16 other countries but nearly all have among people from, or who had recently travelled to, the Gulf.

Research has identified camels as the likely original source of the virus and the Saudi agriculture ministry on Sunday urged camel handlers to wear masks and gloves.

But a growing number of infections have been among health workers or fellow patients in hospitals treating MERS cases and the WHO called on Wednesday for improved infection control.

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Two Florida Health Workers may Have MERS; Saudi Arabia Raises Death Count to 152

Two health workers at a hospital in Orlando, Florida, who were exposed to a patient with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome have begun showing flu-like symptoms, and one of the two has been hospitalized.

Officials at the Dr. P. Phillips Hospital said on Tuesday the two healthcare workers were exposed to the patient - the second confirmed case of MERS on U.S. soil - in the emergency department before it became clear that he might be infected with the virus, which is often deadly.

The second healthcare worker is being isolated in his home and watched for signs of infection.

Hospital and local health officials said at a press conference that the MERS patient, also a healthcare worker, had made a visit last week to the Orlando Regional Medical Center to accompany another person who was having a medical procedure. The MERS patient was symptomatic at the time, but did not seek treatment.

Five healthcare workers from the regional medical center and another 15 from the Dr. P. Phillips Hospital are being tested for MERS, including the two patients who have developed symptoms.

Hospital officials said they are awaiting test results to determine whether any of the exposed hospital workers have MERS.

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Saudi health authorities announced Tuesday five new deaths from MERS, raising the total death toll in the country worst-hit by the mysterious coronavirus to 152 since it appeared in 2012.

Meanwhile, four new infections by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome have been registered, raising the total of cases to 495, the health ministry said.

The ministry added that six patients who had been infected by the SARS-like virus have been cured.

The new deaths occurred on Monday, with one patient dying in Riyadh and the remaining four in the commercial capital Jeddah.

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2nd Case of MERS in the US; Saudis Report 142 Dead

There is a second confirmed case of MERS imported into the United States, the CDC announced Monday.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Florida Department of Health are investigating.

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Three more people have died from the MERS coronavirus in Saudi Arabia, the health ministry said Sunday, taking the number of fatalities from the disease in the kingdom to 142.

The Middle East Respiratory System coronavirus has now infected 483 people in the Gulf nation since it first appeared in 2012, accounting for the vast majority of the 496 cases registered worldwide.

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MIddle East Respiratory Syndrome Leaps to America

Health officials on Friday confirmed the first case of an American infected with a mysterious Middle East virus. The man fell ill after arriving in the U.S. last week from Saudi Arabia where he was a health care worker.

The man is hospitalized in stable condition in northwest Indiana with Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is investigating the case along with Indiana health officials.

The virus is not highly contagious and this case "represents a very low risk to the broader, general public," Dr. Anne Schuchat told reporters during a CDC briefing.

The federal agency plans to track down passengers he may have been in close contact with during his travels; it was not clear how many people may have been exposed to the virus.

Officials didn't provide any details about the man's job in Saudi Arabia or whether he was treating MERS patients there. Saudi Arabia has been the center of a MERS outbreak that began two years ago, and infections have been reported in health care workers.

Overall, at least 400 people have had the respiratory illness, and more than 100 people have died. All had ties to the Middle East or to people who traveled there.

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Is Middle East Repiratory Syndrome (MERS) About to Become an Epidemic?

Saudi Arabia confirmed 26 more cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has killed nearly a third of sufferers, and said 10 more people have died from the disease.

The confirmations follow Egypt's announcement on Saturday that it had confirmed its first case of MERS in a man who had recently returned to the country from Riyadh, where he was working.

Saudi Arabia, where MERS was discovered around two years ago and which remains the country most affected, has now had 339 confirmed cases of MERS, of which 102 have been fatal.

The 143 cases announced since the start of April represent a 73 percent jump in total infections in Saudi Arabia this month.

The new cases were announced in two statements published on the Health Ministry website on Saturday and Sunday.

The 10 confirmed on Saturday included seven in Jeddah, the focal point for the recent outbreak, two in the capital Riyadh and another in Mecca. Two MERS patients died.

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Study of Oral Herpes (HSV-1) Supports the Out of Africa Model for Homo sapiens

A study of the full genetic code of a common human virus offers a dramatic confirmation of the "out-of-Africa" pattern of human migration, which had previously been documented by anthropologists and studies of the human genome.

The virus under study, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), usually causes nothing more severe than cold sores around the mouth, says Curtis Brandt, a professor of medical microbiology and ophthalmology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Brandt is senior author of the study, now online in the journal PLOS ONE.

When Brandt and co-authors Aaron Kolb and Cécile Ané compared 31 strains of HSV-1 collected in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, "the result was fairly stunning," says Brandt.

"The viral strains sort exactly as you would predict based on sequencing of human genomes. We found that all of the African isolates cluster together, all the virus from the Far East, Korea, Japan, China clustered together, all the viruses in Europe and America, with one exception, clustered together," he says.

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Environmental Factors of Increased Precipitation and Temperature Will Not Increase Malaria Infections In West Africa

As public-health officials continue to fight malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers are trying to predict how climate change will impact the disease, which infected an estimated 219 million people in 2010 and is the fifth leading cause of death worldwide among children under age 5.

But projections of future malaria infection have been hampered by wide variation in rainfall predictions for the region and lack of a malaria-transmission model that adequately describes the effects of local rainfall on mosquitoes, which breed and mature in ephemeral pools that form during and after monsoons in West Africa.

A new MIT study led by Elfatih Eltahir, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, combines a new model of malaria transmission with global forecasts for temperature and rainfall to improve predictions of malaria with climate change. Eltahir and graduate student Teresa Yamana found that although the capacity for malaria transmission will change in some areas of West Africa, overall infection rates are not likely to increase: Climate change by itself is not likely to make the situation worse. A paper on the study appeared online Sept. 16 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

"Malaria is one of the world's leading public-health problems, taking a toll not only in lives, but also in economic terms, especially in Africa," Eltahir says. "While other researchers are looking at the global impacts of climate change on broadly defined variables such as global temperature or global sea level, the biggest challenge faced by the global climate-change research community is how to come up with credible predictions for specific variables that are relevant to society, such as malaria incidence, defined at the appropriate regional and local scales."

The study used a combined epidemiological and hydrological model of malaria transmission developed earlier by Eltahir and former graduate student Arne Bomblies, now an assistant professor at the University of Vermont. The model uses detailed information about rainfall, temperature, wind, topography and soils at the village scale. It simulates mosquito behavior by tracking the location, biting, infective status and reproduction cycle of individual female mosquitoes on an hourly basis and includes variables describing humans and other animals that serve as sources of blood meals for mosquitos. Eltahir and Bomblies tested the model using extensive field data gathered from representative villages in Niger over two years, including adult mosquito abundance, observations of pools, and meteorological and soil-moisture measurements.

To incorporate regional data into the model, Yamana took daily satellite data and broke it down into hourly increments so the model could use hourly rainfall to simulate formation of breeding pools. She established baseline current climate conditions by feeding the model satellite data for five climate zones — starting at the southern fringes of the Sahara and moving south through the Sahel transitional zone into the wetter regions of the Guinean coast.

She then repeated the simulations using long-term temperature and rainfall predictions taken from global climate models, which predict a temperature increase in West Africa from 2 to 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, and rainfall changes ranging from large reductions to moderate or large increases. Working on the assumption that future rainfall levels will fall somewhere in between, Yamana and Eltahir identified the rainfall and temperature changes that would create the best and worst environmental suitability for malaria in each of the five zones.

They found that on the southern border of the Sahara, temperatures will become too hot for the survival of Anopheles funestus and Anopheles gambiae sensu lato, the most common malaria-carrying species in Africa. As a result, any likely changes in rainfall would have only a minor impact on malaria.

On the other extreme, hotter temperatures in the southern zone close to the Guinean coast will speed the development of the malaria parasite, improving environmental suitability for malaria regardless of changes in rainfall. However, this area is already heavily saturated with the disease, so the impact is expected to be minimal unless this region experiences an influx of people from the north.

Between these two extremes, the opposing impacts of warming temperature and increasing rainfall are likely to cancel each other, minimizing the impact on disease transmission along the transitional Sahel zone.

The researchers point out that their study does not take into account possible changes in population, migration, economics, health care and other socioeconomic factors.

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