U.S. officials fear Ebola outbreak in Congo could become largest ever by writerknowles
“We’re very concerned. This outbreak does have the potential to be the largest outbreak if things remain unchecked and cases continue at the current pace,” Ray Arthur, director of the CDC’s Global Disease Detection Operations Center, told Yahoo News. “This outbreak has been going for a year now, the first cases were actually in April of 2018, but the outbreak wasn’t recognized and declared until August.
With fewer health workers on the ground in North Kivu, the province in eastern Congo where the outbreak is centered, the WHO shifted its strategy this week from attempting to track and vaccinate the contacts of those diagnosed with the disease, to opening pop-up vaccination clinics in relatively safe communities.
“If we could turn on a switch and do that overnight, we would. The U.S. government is working very closely with Merck to monitor their production schedule and supply, but it’s not easy to ramp up the production of a vaccine quickly,” Arthur said. “You have quality control testing, etc. There are efforts to ramp up the supply, but the timetable is not as fast as you might expect.”
Arthur said mistrust of outsiders is common in North Kivu and a social media disinformation campaign has led many to believe that the Ebola scare is a hoax or that vaccinations actually cause the disease.
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