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Two new suspected Ebola cases in Austria

Two Nigerians in Upper Austria who recently returned from Lagos on August 13 have been placed into quarantine on Tuesday while medical officials test them for the possibility of the deadly Ebola virus.

Published: 19 August 2014 20:03 CEST
Two new suspected Ebola cases in Austria
Ebola virus. Photo: Centers for Disease Control/Cynthia Goldsmith

The two Nigerians returned from Lagos recently, and experienced fever and other symptoms that triggered medical officials to immediately place them into quarantine, while samples of their blood were sent to Hamburg for urgent evaluation.

Officials are working to identify all persons whom they came into contact with after their arrival.

Blood tests have been sent to Hamburg's Bernhard-Nocht Institute, with results expected soon.

The governor of upper Austria Josef Pühringer said that all arrangements had been made so that there would be no further transmission of contagion, if it turns out that they have the deadly virus.

"The risk that the two are actually suffering from Ebola is, however, classified by doctors as not very high," reassured the Governor. 

The Nigerians traveled via Dubai and arrived at Vienna's Schwechat airport.  On Tuesday they were taken to the isolation ward of the regional hospital in Vöcklabruck. 
 
The appropriate procedures were followed after consultation with the Ministry of Health. A nurse practitioner, to whom the Nigerians had turned, had contacted the district medical officer. They then carried out a risk assessment in accordance with applicable national and international guidelines. 
 
Then both patients were transported to the regional hospital in Vöcklabruck using the Infection Transport of the Red Cross, where they have subsequently been housed in a isolation room. 
 
A previously suspected case of ebola, in which the British Nigerian patient died, was confirmed as not being due to Ebola after test results were received on Monday.  Authorities in that case are still unclear as to the cause of death.
 
A Spanish man who recently returned from Sierra Leone turned out to not have the virus.
 
A further case of suspected Ebola in Germany also turned out to be negative.

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EBOLA

Spanish researchers develop five-strain vaccine against lethal Ebola virus

Spanish researchers are working on a vaccine against all five strains of the killer Ebola virus in what would be a world first, Madrid's October 12 Hospital said Wednesday (July 11).

Published: 12 July 2018 09:50 CEST
Spanish researchers develop five-strain vaccine against lethal Ebola virus
Ebola protects itself with proteins that act as a shield, and only exposes its vulnerable zones for short periods of time. Photo: AFP

A prototype vaccine developed by pharmaceutical group Merck is already in use, but acts only against the most virulent, “Zaire” strain.

Despite not having market approval, Merck's rVSV-ZEBOV was administered to people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in May, with UN approval, in a bid to contain an outbreak of the same virus that killed more than 11,300 in three West African countries from 2013 to 2015, sparking international panic.

For several months, a team from the October 12 Hospital has been working with researchers at two other hospitals in the capital to examine and learn from blood samples taken from three people cured of Ebola in Spain.

Lead researcher Rafael Delgado told reporters the difficulty lay in the fact that the virus protects itself with proteins that act as a shield, and only exposes its vulnerable zones for short periods of time.

That makes it tough for the body's immune system to fight the virus.

The three Spanish patients had produced “very effective” viral antibodies, though in a “small quantity” and only against the Zaire strain they were contaminated with.

Delgado, head of microbiology at the hospital, said researchers are aiming to reproduce these antibodies on a larger scale, and in a way that would make them efficient against all five virus strains.

US medical giant Johnson & Johnson is separately developing an experimental vaccine against two Ebola strains.

Delgado said researchers hope to get results from mouse experiments within a year.

The Ebola epidemic caused alarm in Spain in 2014 when a nursing assistant, Teresa Romero, became the first person infected outside Africa.

She caught the disease while tending to a Spanish missionary repatriated from Sierra Leone, who died in Spain in September that year.