Ping to 2,340 “Doctors Without Borders chief: World losing battle with Ebola now”
5843 (probable, confirmed and suspected; see Annex 2) cases and 2803 deaths have been reported in the current outbreak of EVD as at 20 September 2014...
There is no precedent for this and so no means of presently determining what the natural R.O. is for Ebola in such a densely populated urban area, particularly one with the endemic horrendous sanitation problems of Monrovia.
It is simply too soon to make claims about the role of fomite infections here. Lab work is at present the only realistic means of determining the threat of fomite transmissibility of Ebola.
Short form —
1. There is an inflection point in Ebola health care where it is all a matter of being a hospice for the dying.
2. Too few health care workers (HCW) move you from providing real health care to warehousing the dying and risk avoidance for HCW.
3. When there are not enough HCW per infected, you give PPE to families, tell them to stay home an use it, and hope only 3 out of 5 rather than all five become Ebola victims.
4. Ebola is now so wide spread in Liberia and eastern parts of Sierra Leone that “contact tracing” is useless and 1-thru-3 above is all that can be done.
5. Middle and Western Sierra Leone are close to being what Liberia is now in terms of exponential Ebola spread.
6. Bausch has lots of regrets for “being too late” — as if he were responsible — and doesn't think Ebola is airborne, and it does not need to be to do what it is doing. The fomite threat of Ebola infected human fluids in an urban area is enough.
See full text at the link below.
by NPR STAFF
September 22, 201411:36 AM ET
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/22/349882298/dr-daniel-bausch-knows-the-ebola-virus-all-too-well?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news
The Ebola crisis in West Africa has been a “very personal outbreak for me,” says Dr. Daniel Bausch. The virologist spent “quite a few years” working on hemorrhagic fevers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Ebola as well as Marburg and Lassa fever. He knows the Ebola virus all too well, and he knows many of the people who've been deeply involved in fighting the current outbreak, including Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, a virologist in Sierra Leone who contracted Ebola himself and died this spring.
>snip<