Not the first Marburg outbreak in that area of Africa.42 people have died, and the WHO has their knickers in a knot about it, because it kills 80 percent of those infected. Headsup Legal Insurrection...
More at the UKMail:.
and they are working on a vaccine
The MARVAC team identified 28 experimental vaccine candidates that could be effective against the virus - most of which were developed to combat Ebola. Five were highlighted in particular as vaccines to be explored. The shots were developed by non-profits such as the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the International Aids Vaccine Initiative, and Public Health Vaccines - along with pharma giants like Emergent Biosolutions and Janssen.
Trialing these vaccines may be impossible, though. Because viruses such as Marburg rarely result in high case figures, it may take multiple outbreaks for enough cases to properly analyze the virus's effectiveness.
translation: outbreaks are small and stopped by ordinary methods of isolation and infectious disease precautions so dang it we can't see if the vaccine works.
Outbreaks such as these were one reason the mRNA vaccines were developed, so that a vaccine could be made quickly to end such outbreaks. But most of the Ebola vaccines are adenovirus matrix vaccines,, and older technique similar to the AZ British covid vaccine. Because of the smilarity to Ebola, they might work here too.
Q+A: What is MVD? What do we know about the outbreak?
Health officials yesterday confirmed 16 cases and nine deaths have been identified so far, in the country's western Kie Ntem Province.
What is the disease? Marburg virus disease (MVD) is a lethal virus that has a case fatality ratio that can be as high as 88 percent. It was initially detected in 1967 after an outbreak in Marburg, Germany, among workers exposed to African green monkeys. Marburg and Ebola viruses are both members of the Filoviridae family. Though caused by different viruses, the two diseases are clinically similar.
How does it spread? Initially, human MVD infection results from prolonged exposure to mines or caves inhabited by Rousettus bat colonies (fruit bats).
Italics mine.
Those dang bats. But most of the outbreaks tend to be in monkeys, making one wonder if the Monkeys were eating bats.
People remain infectious as long as their blood contains the virus. Is it spreading? A team of 'health emergency experts' have been deployed by the WHO to help prevent the spread of infection further. at a press conference last week, health minister Mitoha Ondo'o Ayekaba said a 'containment plan has been put in place' after consulting with the WHO and United Nations, to help contain the spread of infection.
The panel of experts said a trial should include at least 150 cases. For context, before this outbreak, there had been 30 cases recorded globally from 2007 to 2022.
A history of outbreaks here. Most were small, and it didn't zlthough some like the Angola outbreak had several hundred deaths.
what is interesting is that some outbrekas were from labs such as the 1967 outbreak.
The 1967 Marburg virus outbreak was the first recorded outbreak of Marburg virus disease.[1] It started in early August 1967 when 30 people became ill in the West German towns of Marburg and Frankfurt and later two in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia).[2] The infections were traced back to three laboratories in the separate locations which received a shared shipment of infected African green monkeys.[3] The outbreak involved 25 primary Marburg virus infections and seven deaths, and six non-lethal secondary cases.[2]
sounds like the Ebola Reston virus that was described in the Hot Zone, except that no one caught it. In contrast, the Ebola Reston outbreak here from monkeys bred for labs made local pigs sick and several of the pigkeepers got a mild flu like disease that turned out to be Ebola Reston. for this reason, authrities worry about pigs in these epidemics.
More here on Marburg.
These small outbreaks get a lot of publicity, but Malaria not so much, although half a million people, mainly children, die of it each year.
