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EBOLA

Salzburg activates Ebola emergency plan

A young Liberian refugee who made an epic voyage to Austria after his entire family died - apparently from Ebola - has been isolated in the Salzburg Regional Hospital for observation.

Published: 6 October 2014 23:14 CEST
Salzburg activates Ebola emergency plan
A hospital isolation room. Photo: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER

Late in the afternoon on Monday, the Salzburg Regional Hospital enabled the existing contingency plan for a suspected case of Ebola for the first time.

A young refugee from Liberia had been housed in Flachgau, and since Liberia is a country affected by Ebola, he was admitted for evaluation in the provincial hospital, according to regional health officer Christian Stöckl (ÖVP). 

"It is absolutely too early to speak of a suspected case.  The patient must first be thoroughly examined for possible symptoms. Nevertheless, the emergency plan has been activated as a precaution. The case is being dealt with as a suspected case."
 
The probability that the young man has been infected with Ebola is small, but the measures were taken in order to be fully prepared.
 
"The crisis team has formed in a short time and will advise on the next steps, resulting from the initial examination of the patient," said Stöckl. 
 
The young refugee from Liberia stated in an initial survey that two months ago in Liberia his entire family had fallen ill and died from Ebola. This was announced by the Information Centre of the city of Salzburg on Monday evening. 
 
He had looked after his relatives until the end, and buried them after their deaths, the young man is reported to have said.  Out of fear of catching the illness, he fled to Europe, where he eventually arrived in Austria after passing through Ghana, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone.  The length of his sea voyage was not clear.
 
Based on the described situation the refugee was deemed as a person who had been exposed to a high risk, health authorities said in a press release.
 
"Although from an official viewpoint currently the likelihood of an acute Ebola outbreak is estimated as rather low (the incubation period for the Ebola disease from the time of infection is two to 21 days), all necessary precautions were triggered according to the Ebola Emergency Plan.
 
The young man is being observed in an isolation ward.  We are working to trace all the persons he came into contact with."

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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.