The ongoing Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo concerns a previously unseen variant of the \u200brare Bundibugyo species of the virus, indicating it \u200cstemmed from a new transmission from animals to humans rather than from variants linked to earlier outbreaks, a new study \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
Researchers from Congo, Uganda, Belgium and other countries \u200banalysed the genetic make-up of virus samples from \u206022 patients in Congo and Uganda and found the \u200boutbreak strain was genetically distinct from previous Bundibugyo Ebola \u200bviruses seen in outbreaks in 2007 and 2012.<\/p>\n
The findings, published on Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, suggest the outbreak began with \u200ba fresh animal-to-human transmission event and was then \u200bspread between people.<\/p>\n
The study did not identify the animal source of \u200cthe \u2060outbreak, but Ebola viruses are known to spill over periodically from infected animals to humans.<\/p>\n
The genetic analysis helped confirm that cases detected in Uganda were linked to the \u200boutbreak in \u200bCongo.<\/p>\n
The study’s authors \u2060said wider access to testing and virus sequencing could help detect future Ebola \u200boutbreaks earlier and improve efforts to contain them.<\/p>\n
There \u200bis \u2060no approved vaccine or treatment for Bundibugyo, although candidate vaccines and treatments are under development.<\/p>\n
The outbreak was declared on \u2060May \u200b15 and has\u00a0surpassed 2,000 deaths, \u200bwith 4,381 confirmed cases so far, according to the latest government data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo concerns a previously unseen variant of the \u200brare Bundibugyo species of the virus, indicating it \u200cstemmed from a new transmission from animals to humans rather than from variants linked to earlier outbreaks, a new study \u200bsaid. Researchers from Congo, Uganda, Belgium and other countries \u200banalysed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2362,2854],"tags":[509,5391,3016,5390,132],"class_list":["post-21740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-featured","category-health","tag-belgium","tag-bundibugyo-ebola-viruses","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc","tag-ebola-viruses","tag-uganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21741,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21740\/revisions\/21741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}