outbreak

The quarantine period for Ebola virus

WHO and CDC recommend that individuals who are potentially infected with Ebola virus should be quarantined for 21 days. Where does this number come from? Charles Haas at Drexel University asked the same question, and provides an answer. The quarantine period for an infectious disease is based on the incubation period, the time before symptoms of an infection appear. For Ebola virus, …

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WHO assessment of experimental Ebola virus vaccines

The World Health Organization held a conference to assess the status of testing and eventual licensing of two candidate Ebola virus vaccines. The agenda and list of participants and the final report are available. I was interested in the following list of key expected milestones: October 2014: Mechanisms for evaluating and sharing data in real time must be …

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Enterovirus D68 infections in North America

An outbreak of respiratory disease caused by enterovirus D68 began in August of this year with clusters of cases in Missouri and Illinois. Since then 691 infections have been confirmed in 46 states in the US. The number of confirmed infections is likely to increase in the coming weeks, as CDC has developed a more rapid diagnostic …

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Could the Ebola virus epidemic have been prevented?

The cover of this week’s issue of Businessweek declares that ‘Ebola is coming’ in letters colored like blood, with the subtitle ‘The US had a chance to stop the virus in its tracks. It missed’. Although the article presents a good analysis of the hurdles in developing antibody therapy for Ebola virus infection, the cover …

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