Congo outbreak of Ebola unrelated to escalating West African epidemic

Apologies if this has been posted

Congo outbreak of Ebola unrelated to escalating West African epidemic

A new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is unrelated to the 6-month-old epidemic in West Africa, a genetic analysis has confirmed. Although the virus belongs to the same species, Ebola-Zaire, the strain is genetically so different that it "is definitely not a dissemination of the outbreak in West Africa,” says virologist Eric Leroy of the International Centre for Medical Research of Franceville, the World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating center in Gabon that is characterizing the DRC virus.

Science Insider

Virological analysis: no link between Ebola outbreaks in west Africa and Democratic Republic of Congo

Results from virus sequencing of samples from the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were received last night. The virus is the Zaire species, in a lineage most closely related to a virus from the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, DRC. ....


....Results from virus characterization, together with findings from the epidemiological investigation, are definitive: the outbreak in DRC is a distinct and independent event, with no relationship to the outbreak in west Africa.

These findings are reassuring, as they exclude the possibility that the virus has spread from West to Central Africa.

WHO

Are these findings really reassuring if the death toll from this strain in Congo is 31? With 53 cases. Treatment that works on one strain might not on another.

Just wondering about that. Opinions?

I'm wondering if animals are carriers and have no symptoms. Eaten or pets there are all around these communities.

a reply to: Iamthatbish
I've read some do wonder about pets

The west African strain has mutated at least 250 times while spreading.
This new strain has the potential to do the same I suppose

The data show that the virus is rapidly accumulating new mutations as it spreads through people. "We've found over 250 mutations that are changing in real time as we're watching," Sabeti says.

While moving through the human population in West Africa, she says, the virus has been collecting mutations about twice as quickly as it did while circulating among animals in the past decade or so.

"The more time you give a virus to mutate and the more human-to-human transmission you see," she says, "the more opportunities you give it to fall upon some [mutation] that could make it more easily transmissible or more pathogenic."

NPR

Sabeti Lab - PDF

Washington Post

UPDATE for Congo
32 deaths - 59 cases

The Democratic Republic of Congo upped its death toll from Ebola on Saturday to 32 but insisted the outbreak, separate from an epidemic raging in west Africa, could be contained in its remote forest hotspot.

"We have registered 32 deaths," one up from a toll issued on Tuesday, Health Minister Felix Kabange Numbi told a press conference.

Kabange tallied 59 likely or confirmed cases of the tropical fever, saying the "big challenge" was to survey suspicious cases in order to staunch the contagion.

Source

I have read how a virus will have to give up one of his traits if it pursuits excellence in others. So Ebola gives up its huge mortality rate in order to become more contagious. It does so by mutating, I think. Maybe mutating to the point it can no longer be traced back to the country/area it started from? And then it will show up as an entirely new virus, and specialists will claim it has nothing to do whatsoever with the strain ravaging countries of the same continent.

During a regional meeting between the Ministry of Health of DRC and the Southern African Development Community on the management and prevention of EVD transmission, the following measures were recommended: standardization of the interventions for the prevention of EVD and enhancement of sanitary border control without impeding international traffic.

Source

without impending international traffic

God forbid they contain it in only one county of Congo!

If the Congo is a new strain independent of the other if you catch one will it give you some resistance to catching the other?

Or can you catch one and survive but then catch the other at a later date and die?


That is presuming both strains spread.

Different strains will require different treatments.

Yes, you could theoretically catch one and survive but then later succumb to other strains because the antibodies needed to fight off one strain would be different for another.

A potential danger is the two strains combining and forming an entirely new strain altogether with atributes of both.

a reply to: jadedANDcynical

So if they both spread the survival rate for Africa would be a lot lower than the 40% it is now.
If virus A fails to kill you then virus B probably will.

I thought 60% was bad but that would be a nightmare.