Ebola virus disease, West Africa – update 19 August 2014

Between 14 and 16 August 2014, a total of 113 new cases of Ebola virus disease (laboratory-confirmed, probable, and suspect cases) as well as 84 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia*, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.

The response of WHO and other partners to the Ebola Virus outbreak is continuing to grow in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. To reduce the likelihood that those who are infected will carry the disease outside their communities, the governments have set up quarantine zones in areas of high transmission including severely-affected cities such as Gueckedou in Guinea, Kenema and Kailahun in Sierra Leone and Foya in Liberia.

This prevents people living in these areas from moving to other parts of the country and potentially increasing EVD transmission. However, it also means that barriers to travel limit their access to food and other necessities. While preventing further transmission of EVD is crucial, it is essential that people in those zones have access to food, water, good sanitation and other basic supplies.

WHO is working with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to ensure people in the quarantine zones receive regular food aid and other non-medical tsupplies. WFP is now scaling up its programme to distribute food to the around 1 million people living in the quarantine zones in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Food has been delivered to hospitalized patients and people under quarantine who are not able to leave their homes to purchase food. Providing regular food supplies is a potent means of limiting unnecessary movement.

WHO does not recommend any travel or trade restrictions be applied except in cases where individuals have been confirmed or are suspected of being infected with EVD or where individuals have had contact with cases of EVD. (Contacts do not include properly-protected health-care workers and laboratory staff.) Temporary recommendations from the Emergency Committee with regard to actions to be taken by countries can be found at:

Confirmed, probable, and suspect cases and deaths from Ebola virus disease in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, as of 16 August 2014

Chart with data breakdown by country available at: http://www.afro.who.int/en/clusters-a-programmes/dpc/epidemic-a-pandemic-alert-and-response/outbreak-news/4258-ebola-virus-disease-west-africa-19-august-2014.html

Eeeee-bolllll-aaaaaa ping!

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

It's positive, so to speak - since no one can in good conscience call it 'good,' that Nigeria is on the radar. All the cases there are officially traced back to the American national who broke bad (an unfortunate symptom) and became fully symptomatic on the first leg of his itinerary out of Monrovia and died in Lagos. Among that growing pool of potentially infected individuals may be a 48 year old woman found today in the Tyrol of Austria.

These reports are official calculations, not forensic. There's, therefore, no mention of the mob storming an isolation clinic in the incredible West Point slum of Monrovia, Saturday. Anyone familiar with that story, and the ground, and equipped with but little imagination can project what result will soon blossom out of that.

Things are certain to become far more officially "worse," and reported after the fact, with barn doors closed after the cows have fled.

Monrovia is sufficiently isolated now, perhaps; already remote and now restricted from the airways, but the leap to Lagos...

With no pictures, there is no story reported from the Captive Press, so will we ever fully learn the story unfolding in West Point, as the incubation period peaks around labor day?

Not likely, I suppose, will anyone report LIVE from Monrovia, nor will there be time to mention the story in passing with such important matters pushed in front of the cameras in Missouri by Oakland slackers funded by George Soros.

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