Haemorrhagic fever / Ebola outbreaks have been reported - accident, natural or bio-weapon?

[Bob]

A day later and now 560 cases of Ebola Zaire strain in DR Congo, the NE part of the country.

Deaths are now at 336 souls.

Complicating treatment, vaccination, and medical assistance - at least 50 armed groups are centered in the area.

WHO, the UN public health agency estimates that more than a million refugees and internally displaced people are traveling through and out of North Kivu and Ituri, and this movement is a potential risk factor for the spread of Ebola. Another complication: a high number of malaria cases in the region.

[Bob]

25 December 2018

South Sudan has felt it important to scale up its training and preparedness and response teams for the Ebola Virus detection and handling efforts.

A scale-up in preparedness measures, including an increase in volunteer trainings and equipment, are required as the outbreak in DRC continues to worsen and spread, with new clusters of cases emerging. As of 19 December, there have been 560 confirmed and probable cases in DRC.

This coupled with the continued movement of populations between the DRC and South Sudan border, lack of capacity of the health system to respond to EVD cases, as well as on-going instability increases the potential of an outbreak in South Sudan.

The WHO (World Health Organization) risk level of the outbreak spreading to South Sudan has been increased from high to very high both at national and regional levels.

As can be seen in the map above, Southern Sudan borders the affected area in the upper northeast of the DR Congo where the outbreak continues to grow.

Besides the risk of Ebola Zaire infected public traveling back and forth across the border, there is a situation which continues to grow, armed conflict from the militants who continue to hinder efforts to quell the spread.

[Bob]

A U.S. physician exposed to Ebola now in US - he was exposed while treating patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo arrived in the United States today and was taken to a secure area at the Nebraska Medical Center. This transport just happened 29 December, 2018.

The 39-year-old physician, who isn't exhibiting symptoms of the deadly virus, was privately transported to the medical center in Omaha, Nebraska, on Saturday afternoon, officials there confirmed.

Ebola, which can spread through direct contact, can incubate for three weeks before an infected person begins showing symptoms.

The doctor will be kept under observation in a secure area for up to two weeks and transferred to a special bio-containment unit if symptoms develop.

The center, which is partnered with the University of Nebraska Medical Center, has previously treated Ebola patients.

"This person may have been exposed to the virus but is not ill and is not contagious," said Ted Cieslak, an infectious diseases specialist at the medical center. "Should any symptoms develop, the Nebraska Medicine/UNMC team is among the most qualified in the world to deal with them."

The physician was working at a missionary hospital in the DRC and treated a severely ill patient who subsequently tested positive for Ebola, according to a government official with knowledge of the case. The physician one day later received the experimental Ebola vaccine as a post-exposure preventive measure and has been under observation for a week.

more: https://www.ketv.com/article/nebrask...ebola/25707116

[Bob]

In the towns of Beni, Oicha, Mabalako, and Komanda, in DR Congo (NE) the deaths have increased upwards. Bringing the current total for this outbreak up to 363, with a case-fatality rate of 61%.

The amount of cases (people infected or potentially afflicted) is showing as 598 as of December 30.

People vaccinated: 53,737. The only vaccine to be used in this outbreak is the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine, manufactured by the pharmaceutical group Merck (proved and developed in Canada), following approval by the Ethics Committee in its decision of 19 May 2018.

[Bob]

Ethiopia is continuing its Ebola Screening Campaign.

Cases are over 600 currently in DR Congo, NE area.

All travelers are being screened at the borders in Ethiopia.

4.5 million travelers have been screened at all ports of entry to Ethiopia, according to Dr Amir Aman, Ethiopia’s Minister of Health.

The number appears to be about 30,000 travelers screened per day.

[Bob]

China reports an ebola-like infective virus present in fruit bats that have been tested - southwestern China

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/scie...d-chinese-bats

“Studying the genetic diversity and geographic distribution of bat-borne filoviruses is very important for risk assessment and outbreak prevention, as this type of infectious disease can affect the general public without warning and with devastating consequences,” Wang said.

At present, the Mengla virus has only been identified in populations of Rousettus bats in China, and further tests will be conducted to assess the risk of the virus spreading to other species.

The team, led by Shi Zhengli from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Virology in Wuhan and Wang Linfa from the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, discovered that the new virus had several important functional similarities with the Ebola and Marburg viruses.

The Mengla virus – discovered in a fruit bat caught in Mengla county, Yunnan province – is closely related to the Ebola and Marburg viruses which are capable of causing severe and often fatal bleeding and organ failure in humans, according to the scientists.

Their study, published in the January edition of the online journal Nature Microbiology, confirmed that the new virus could infect cells from monkeys, hamsters, dogs and humans.

[Bob]

Bold statement made by research scientists working to protect against many strains of Ebola with ONE dose.

There is a new medication that in one dose successfully protected nonhuman primates against a lethal infection of all strains of the deadly Ebola virus. The findings are now available in Cell Host & Microbe.

Dr. Thomas Geisbert, a world-renowned Ebola researcher at The University of Texas Medical Branch, said that previous therapeutics typically were of the "one bug, one drug" variety. But because of the unpredictable nature and variety of the Ebola virus, scientists have been seeking a way to protect against different strains of the virus.

"Our experimental drug can protect against all forms of Ebola known to harm people, suggesting that it will continue to protect people if the Ebola viruses evolve over time," said Geisbert, who is a professor of microbiology and immunology at UTMB.

The team of scientists demonstrated that a two-antibody cocktail called MBP134 could fully protect nonhuman primates and ferrets against lethal Ebola virus infections of caused by the Bundibugyo and Sudan strain as well as the deadliest Zaire strain that caused the 2013-16 epidemic in West Africa and the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"We were able to protect the nonhuman primates against all the Ebola species plaguing people at a single low dose," said Larry Zeitlin, president of Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. "Further studies exploring even lower doses could open the door to treatment via auto-injectors like the kind used for allergic reactions. The ability to quickly and efficiently provide protection against all Ebola viruses in a single dose would reduce the burden on health care workers in the field during outbreaks, especially in regions that have a less-developed infrastructure."

ref: Jan 9th 2019, from Medical Xpress - https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-...effective.html

[Bob]

Update to post 1083 above - Doctor admitted to Omaha quarantine facility declared Ebola-Free.

This individual arrived for monitoring in Omaha on Dec. 29. Federal, state and county public health officials coordinated the monitoring effort at Nebraska Medical Center. The individual was monitored in a secure area not accessible by the public or any patients. 21 days later, no symptoms, no trace of Ebola.

The physician was working at a missionary hospital in the DRC and treated a severely ill patient who subsequently tested positive for Ebola, according to a government official with knowledge of the case. The physician one day later received the experimental Ebola vaccine as a post-exposure preventive measure. It is unknown if the Ebola vaccine contributed to a post exposure effective treatment, or if the Ebola virus was never transferred to the Doctor.

Note - it is assumed that the Doctor was overseas for at least 6 days prior to arrival in the US for monitoring (and/or potential treatment). The Doctor was observed for 16 days in the US.

[Bob]

During the past 4 days, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) health ministry reported 19 more Ebola cases in five locations, though most were from Katwa in DR Congo within the outbreak region.

As of today to 649 cases of the infection have happened in the area. Ten more people have died from their infections.

[Bob]

The Eboa virus is showing up in West African bats

https://www.foxnews.com/health/ebola...scientists-say

The Ebola virus has been found in a bat in Liberia, the country’s government and scientists with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health announced this week.

The discovery marks the first time the virus has ever been found in a bat in West Africa, though it has previously been found in bats in Central Africa, according to the Tech Times.

Scientists have previously suspected bats could be an animal host for the virus. Specifically, for the greater long-fingered bat, scientists will need to find more than one bat of this species to determine whether or not this type is a natural reservoir, or host, of the Ebola virus, according to The Washington Post.

While scientists noted more research is needed, the Liberian government chose to announce the news in order to “engage local communities about this finding to help reduce the possible risk of exposure and educate people about the positive impacts of bat species on pest control and the environment,” according to the statement.

Don't eat the bats, don't consume the fruit that the bats have munched on, and don't eat the primates (monkeys) that have eaten the fruit that the bats have munched on that has dropped to the ground. Primates frequently take the fruit they find on the ground opportunistically, and if it has been contaminated by an infected bat, will pick up the virus.. Humans in Africa tend to feel bushmeat (monkeys) are great to eat as well as eating bats too.. Not a good practice considering Ebola can easily jump from animal to human that way..

[Bob]

The Ebola Zaire strain outbreak continues to grow.

Since the outbreak started in August 2018, most infections have occurred in the country's Katwa health zone in the upper NE part of the Country.

However, "the outbreak has also extended southwards to Kayina health zone, a high security risk area," the WHO said in a Jan. 24 statement cited by Reuters.

Political unrest and frequent fighting in the Congo have hampered healthcare workers' efforts to monitor and educate those at risk of exposure.

Health officials identified five Ebola cases in Kayina, which sits between the main outbreak zone and Goma, a major city near the Rwandan border.

The WHO has already run an Ebola simulation exercise in Rwanda in case the outbreak spreads across the border.

The organization also plans to send a team to vaccinate health workers and boost the country's outbreak preparedness.

As of Jan. 23, Congo's health ministry reported 713 confirmed and probable infections linked to the outbreak, along with 439 deaths.

[ThePythonicCow]

As Dr. Thomas Levy discusses starting at the 1:03:40 mark in the video Intravenous Vitamin C in the Clinical Practice, Vitamin C in conjunction with glutathione and ozone therapy can readily treat Ebola.

Levy bases his comments on this paper: Rapid resolution of hemorrhagic fever (Ebola) in Sierra Leone with ozone therapy.

Here's the Abstract of that paper:

==============

Background: Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has ravaged three countries in West Africa. The mortality rate is extremely high, and it is perceived not only as threat to all of Africa but to the entire world. There is no known treatment to date other than administration of convalescent blood or experimental monoclonal antibodies, which both often fail. Ozone therapy (OT) has been in clinical use for decades and has been found to have physiological effects, which should directly inactivate the virus itself, as well as modulate its damaging effects. We present the scientific background and the possibility of ozone therapy as a cure or prevention for EVD in five consecutive patients.

Materials and Methods: Ozone therapy administration by a combination of direct intravenous gas administration, rectal gas administration and ozonized water was administered to three patients with known acute EVD, one with apparent acute infection, and one case of extremely high risk. Treatment was carried out for up to ten days despite fast total remission of symptoms. Vitamin C and glutathione supporting supplements were administered.

Results: Four symptomatic patients, three with test positive EVD confirmation and one (who suffered Ebola contaminated needle stick contamination three days earlier) without lab confirmation all remitted symptoms within 2-4 days and fully recovered. All four ill cases had an immediate recovery course upon initiation of therapy. The single case of non-symptomatic high-risk exposure treated preventively did not develop symptoms.

Conclusion: Ebola virus may have a very narrow window of redox infectivity capacity, which can be easily exploited with OT. OT may be a useful modality in EVD and other viral diseases and should be immediately studied to save lives that might otherwise be lost.

==============

I've been reading and listening to Levy for the last couple of days. I'm finding him quite well informed and honest on matters relating to toxins and infectious diseases in the human body and with their treatment, especially using Vitamin C.

In some other video of Levy's that I was listening to a couple of days ago, Levy speculated that ebola would likely be less catastrophic in the United States, as opposed to some equatorial African countries, because a larger portion of the population in those African countries had seriously compromised nutrition. Populations with unusually low reserves of Vitamin C in their body, due to poor nutrition or to existing serious chronic disease, would likely be more at risk of dying from Ebola.

[Bob]

It was interesting reading Russian Television's commentary on Ebola Treatments (of the non-accepted types) -

see - https://www.rt.com/news/194200-ebola...tment-bizarre/

Levy was mentioned in the top of their list -

The article was Published time: 8 Oct, 2014 14:21
Edited time: 9 Oct, 2014 11:35

There was no mention of Ozone therapy in the RT article.

================

In May 2018

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0507174013.htm

Seems that the current mindset is to focus on using mono-clonal anti-bodies, which can be even free-dried, not requiring extremely low temperatures which would require refrigeration methods not easily obtainable in the "out back" of the African countries experiencing the outbreaks.

==============

From 2015

Popular science asks the question about Ebola treatment using Ozone

https://www.popsci.com/could-ozone-t...ease-outbreaks

While the patients’ survival rate was higher than the typical rate in the clinic, the sample size was too small to be certain that it wasn’t just due to chance, that ozone therapy did, in fact, make them better. The researchers only tested the therapy on four patients, all of whom were treated at the ideal time: very shortly after symptoms developed.

What they were saying, insufficient amount of patients were in the study, insufficient randomness in the study.. Was it the Ozone or a boosted immune system that went after the Ebola; were a patients own antibodies triggered into hyper activity by the Ozone? Insufficient data, but many questions..

Vaccine studies for instance test on thousands of patients some healthy some infected. How does one get 1000 Ebola infected patients to study on? Researchers turn to smaller lab animals and use them for the testing, often-times sacrificing the animal if it is healthy or dead (necropsy) to see how the animal died, or how organs and tissues were affected by the treatment AND the infection.

[Bob]

A hospital in Ohio is asking for volunteers to test a new vaccine that claims to boost the immune system to go after certain types of viruses - Ebola is one of them.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wfw4wuC8GQ8

ref: http://www.wvxu.org/post/cincinnati-...virus#stream/0

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is looking to increase the number of people participating in a clinical trial testing a new Ebola vaccine.

It took 2 1/2 years to get approval and develop the vaccine.

The vaccine is being tested on adults and is given in two doses a week apart.

The vaccine - was developed at the National Institutes of Health and sponsored by drug company Janssen - it does not contain the Ebola virus. Instead, the vaccine contains other inactivated viruses.

It took two-and-a-half years before researchers could start testing it on humans.

Another new Ebola vaccine has already been deployed in Africa. Spearman says it's important to have more than one.

[avid]

Hopefully no queueing up for this ....

[bogdan9310]

I think they are deliberately infecting the population to drop it down, overpopulation is becoming a problem.

[Bob]

Posted by bogdan9310 (here)
I think they are deliberately infecting the population to drop it down, overpopulation is becoming a problem.

Ebola Zaire infection is a most evil way to do that. Take a look at the whole thread, it is a very interesting story to date..

Welcome to the Forum

[Bob]

University Hospital - at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia - a patient was recently tested for Ebola.

Dr. P.J. Brennan, Penn Medicine's chief medical officer, said in a statement that preliminary testing shows the patient has another condition. (Malaria and Lassa Fever (from rat urine and feces exposure) can manifest similarly as can numerous other types of bleeding type of fevers).

"Proper protocols and precautions will remain in place to ensure the safety of all of our patients and staff," he said.

The Hospital would not release the details about the patient or what the patient has.

Current statistics:

Ebola has infected at least 788 people and killed 486 people as of Feb. 4 since an outbreak of the virus started in the Democratic Republic of Congo in August, according to the World Health Organization.

[Bob]

To me this is a bit troubling.

Lancet, one of the medical community's most prestigious "trade journals" that lets key authors respected in the community publish their investigations, studies, and thoughts has come out with an article on the 4th February this year which says the current Ebola Zaire outbreak in North East DR Congo could very well lead to a worldwide emergency.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...243-0/fulltext

The reasoning cites this:

People are afraid to come in when symptoms appear.

Rebels fighting in the area are attacking health care workers.

People are being told (rumors) if they enter a clinic for checking out symptoms, that they will be put in body bags, they will be quickly killed and their body parts and organs harvested for sale.

At close to 800 people diagnosed with Ebola Zaire, existing health care facilities are maxing out - running out of doctors, beds, supplies, isolation wards.

--------------

Authors Laurence Gostin, faculty director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, and colleagues, in their letter titled, “Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Time to sound a global alert?” write that this latest outbreak of Ebola in DRC is the second largest since the 2014 West African epidemic. This makes it the second largest in the history of mankind, they write. The team write about the hurdles that make tackling this outbreak an uphill task including areas riddled with “armed conflict, political instabilities and mass displacement” that make it difficult for help and relief operations to work independently and effectively.

The team writes that the “WHO, the DRC Government, and non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners have shown remarkable leadership but are badly stretched.” They warned that the outbreak is “far from controlled” and there is a substantial risk of it becoming a “long-term epidemic with regional, perhaps global, impacts.”

The team at present is calling for “high-level political, financial, and technical support to address the Ebola outbreak that started last May” in the DRC. There are fresh warnings about the spread of this disease closer to Goma city. The outbreak now has already reached Butemba that houses around a million people. To United Nations is actively sending help to protect Goma city and also to help them deal with the situation. At present 2000 emergency workers are sent to Goma city to handle the influx of patients with Ebola.

[Bob]

12 February - During Congo’s current outbreak — the country’s 10th and its largest since Ebola was discovered within its borders in 1976 — about 63 percent of those infected have died, or 510 out of the 811 cases reported as of February 9.

Stopping the outbreak, which began August 1, has been difficult due to security risks and armed conflict in the region, as well as public mistrust of the medical response, the World Health Organization says.

These health zones (mostly outlined in red) in Congo have confirmed and probable cases of Ebola. The first multidrug clinical trial of Ebola therapies got started in the city of Beni in November.

The only non-antibody treatment being studied in the trial is an antiviral drug called remdesivir, or GS-5734, which appears to target a step in the virus’ “owner’s manual” for making copies of itself.

The drug suppressed virus replication, and, in certain doses, helped Ebola-infected macaques survive, researchers reported in Nature in 2016.

All of the therapies under scrutiny are already being used in this outbreak under “compassionate use” protocols set by WHO.

In the Congolese treatment units that will participate in the clinical trial, patients will be randomly assigned to receive one of the drugs, with an equal number of patients in each group.

If the trial doesn’t enroll enough patients to get statistically significant results, it will remain open to patients in future outbreaks.

Meantime, people not yet exposed to Ebola but considered high risk in Congo and surrounding countries are receiving an experimental vaccine called rVSV-ZEBOV (SN Online: 5/21/18) to prevent infection. More than 73,000 people have gotten the preventative shot so far.

Congo has vaccinated health workers, patients’ family members and other contacts. Neighboring regions in Uganda and South Sudan are also vaccinating health workers and others at risk. Rwanda has plans to follow suit.

“The one silver lining in the entire dark cloud” of this outbreak is the availability of the vaccine and the therapeutics, says infectious disease epidemiologist Mosoka Fallah of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia in Monrovia. He thinks the deployment of the vaccine and the treatments have kept the outbreak from becoming far worse than it already is.