3rd person in Kenya tests positive for Ebola as DR Congo outbreak spreads to 8th province
Meghan HolohanToday at 4:03 p.m.
Ebola
A third person in Kenya has tested positive for Ebola, health ministry officials announced, according to Africa News. The 65-year-old woman—a close relative of the first two Ebola cases in the country—started quarantining prior to developing symptoms.
Yesterday, health officials reported that two cases of Ebola has been detected in an eighth province, North Ubangi. According to Reuters, the DRC has yet to officially announce the infections.
Ituri province has seen the most Ebola cases, with North Kivu province recently experiencing a spike in cases. South Kivu, Tshopo, Haut-Uele, Bas-Uele, and South Ubangi provinces have also reported Ebola cases during this outbreak. So far, the virus has sickened 9,235 people and led to 4,444 deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been in school for only a little more than a month, yet 10 students have already died of the Bundibugyo Ebola virus, per Africa News.
Twenty-five Ebola cases have been confirmed in schoolchildren in Ituri, with seven survivors still undergoing treatment. Early this month, the humanitarian group Save the Children said that about seven children have died of Ebola every day—for a total of 961 children—since the outbreak was detected in May.
Vaccine trials underway
Currently, there is no vaccine or treatment specifically targeting Bundibugyo virus causing this outbreak. But researchers in Uganda have launched a phase 1 clinical trial of a candidate vaccine to combat the Bundibugyo virus.“In a phase one vaccine trial, what we are looking out for is whether the vaccine is safe, first and foremost and secondly, whether it enlists an appropriate immune response,” Eugene Ruzagira, PhD, senior scientist at the Medical Research Council, the Uganda Virus Research Institute, and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Uganda Research Unit, told Africa News.
In a phase one vaccine trial, what we are looking out for is whether the vaccine is safe, first and foremost and secondly, whether it enlists an appropriate immune response.
Eugene Ruzagira, PhD
Last week, the team gave a participant the first dose of the University of Oxford’s Bundibugyo Ebola vaccine candidate at a research site in Masaka City in southwestern Uganda.
“The vaccine is built on the same platform as the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which was given to millions of people worldwide, including here in Uganda,” Ruzagira said on LinkedIn. “Its strong safety record and proven large-scale manufacturing give us a head start on both safety and supply.”
Phase 1 trial launches
And this week, German researchers announced that Merck’s Ervebo, a licensed Ebola vaccine targeting the Zaire Ebola virus, sparks T-cell cross reactivity against it, although it remains to be seen whether it will protect infected people.The Uganda team notes that its clinical trial is in the early stages. “In a phase one vaccine trial, what we are looking out for is whether the vaccine is safe, first and foremost and secondly, whether it enlists an appropriate immune response,” Ruzagira told Africa News.
A partnership between the Oxford Vaccine Group and the Pandemic Science Institute led to the creation of this vaccine candidate, he added. The researchers plan to enroll 110 participants by November.
“Bundibugyo virus disease is a form of Ebola with no approved vaccine or specific treatment,” Ruzagira said in a news release. “By evaluating the ChAdOx-based Bundibugyo Ebola vaccine candidate in Uganda, we are generating the evidence needed to determine whether it is safe and capable of stimulating the immune responses that could help protect at-risk communities in future outbreaks.”