JULY 03 - Health officials in Democratic Republic of Congo are investigating a possible outbreak of Ebola in a village about 270 km (170 miles) northeast of the capital Kinshasa, the government and the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
JUNE 29 - Specimen from the corpse of a 17 year old tested positive on 2 occasions after our burial team moved into the village and safely took the specimen before safe burial of the corpse", said Nyenswah. We did the test twice and it all came positive but there is no need to panic. Quickly detecting means our system is working". - Mr. Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia Incidence Management Team Head." Liberia is reporting a new case of the deadly Ebola virus just one month and 20 days after the World Health Organization declared the country free of Ebola virus transmission.
JUNE 26 - Three doctors and 28 nurses were quarantined in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, when a mother tested positive for the Ebola virus after giving birth. After doctors were unable to control mother's bleeding, the mother and baby were transferred to the Princess Christian Maternity Hospital emergency ward. There, it was confirmed she was Ebola positive. The baby and all of the attendant health-care workers were quarantined for 21 days. On June 24th, the United Nations envoy for Ebola response has begun a visit to take stock of prevention and preparedness efforts in Guinea Bissau, which remains at high risk given its proximity to Guinea where new cases of the virus were reported in an urban area bordering the 2 countries.
JUNE 24 - Guinea will put 4 villages under a 21-day quarantine as part of a robust strategy to stamp out a lingering Ebola epidemic after new cases of the disease were discovered there. According to a health ministry document seen by Reuters on Wednesday [24 Jun 2015], the quarantine will apply to Sikhourou Koloteya in the Forecariah prefecture southeast of the capital Conakry along with Tanene and Bamba in Dubreka prefecture. The village of Tamarasy in the Boke mining region will also be subject to the new measures.
MAY 13 - Italy's health ministry says a nurse who came to Italy from Sierra Leone last week has tested positive for the Ebola virus. The ministry said a blood sample was sent to Rome for testing Tuesday from Sardinia, where the nurse had arrived on May 8. The nurse, who wasn't identified to protect his privacy, worked for the non-governmental aid group Emergency in Sierra Leone, one of the African countries hardest hit by often-fatal Ebola. The ministry said the nurse noticed the first symptoms on Sunday evening and was admitted to the infectious disease ward of Sassari hospital. He will soon be transferred to Rome's Spallanzani infectious disease hospital, which last year successfully treated an Italian doctor who contracted Ebola after working in Sierra Leone, also for Emergency. Three close contacts were set in preventive quarantine. UPDATE (May 15): Condition worsened.
APRIL 04 - Sierra Leone's eastern district of Kailahun, once a hotbed of Ebola, has recorded its first case in nearly four months, threatening progress made to stamp out the disease, officials said on Saturday. A 9-month-old boy tested positive for Ebola after dying in Kailahun, the district on Guinea's border that recorded Sierra Leone's first Ebola case last May and was for months the epicenter of the crisis.Kailahun district council chairman, said it was not clear how the boy may have contracted Ebola as both his parents were healthy.He said the boy may have gotten the disease during a blood transfusion or there may have been a problem with the sample that was tested. Sources at the Nixon Hospital in Kailahun District confirmed that the boy underwent a blood transfusion before dying.
MARCH 30 - Liberian authorities are urging Ebola survivors to refrain from unprotected sex beyond the recommended 90 days, after the country's first Ebola death in more than a month.The female patient who died Friday was married to a man who had the disease but survived.Officials fear she may have gotten sick through sexual transmission. The World Heath Organization recommends that Ebola survivors refrain from sex for 90 days.
MARCH 14 - Several American healthcare workers who may have come in contact with a US volunteer who tested positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone are being monitored for signs of illness. The patient, whose identity has not been revealed, was in serious condition (UPDATE - 17 March: Condition critical) after arriving by private charter plane at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center near the US capital early Friday.No others have tested positive so far, but at least one other American is being flown from Sierra Leone to Atlanta, Georgia as a precautionary measure.
MARCH 10 - A UK military healthcare worker has tested positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone, Public Health England has confirmed. No details about the individual have been released. Discussions are now under way as to whether to fly the healthcare worker back to the UK for treatment in the specialist unit at the Royal Free hospital in London. Two healthcare volunteers, Will Pooley and Pauline Cafferkey, were both repatriated and successfully treated at the Royal Free.PHE will not say where the latest healthcare worker to be infected was working, but it is likely to have been in the military-run Ebola unit, which is situated in the grounds of the Kerry Town treatment centre run by Save the Children. It was at Kerry Town that Cafferkey was infected, probably during the process of taking off her face mask, which was of a different design to that worn by the rest of the volunteers.
FEBRUARY 14 - Sierra Leone placed hundreds of homes in the capital under Ebola quarantine Friday, in a huge blow for its recovery less than a month after it lifted all restrictions on movement. The government said 700 properties had been locked down in Aberdeen, a fishing and tourist district of Freetown, after the death of a fisherman who tested positive for the deadly tropical virus.
FEBRUARY 07 - Mortality in children under five years of age has been 80 percent, meaning four out of five die, and up to 95 percent among under one-year-olds who require intensive nursing and frequent feeding, she said.
FEBRUARY 05 - (1) The number of new cases of Ebola went up in all three of West Africa's worst-hit countries in the last week of January, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.It is the first weekly increase in 2015, ending a series of encouraging declines. The WHO says Sierra Leone registered 80 of the 124 new cases, Guinea 39 and Liberia the remaining five. (2) One officer died and three crew were kidnapped in an armed attack on a Greek-controlled VLCC off Nigeria, the Greek shipping ministry said.
JANUARY 31 - Hours after a suspected Ebola patient in Sacramento was found to be free of the virus, a second person hospitalized in California's capital was reported by public health officials on Friday to be undergoing evaluation and testing for the disease. The second patient was admitted to Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center on Wednesday, a day before the earlier patient came to light, and like the previous case is considered to be at low risk of having contracted the deadly virus, the hospital said in a statement. There was no immediate word on whether the two cases were linked or whether the second patient had traveled recently in West Africa,.
JANUARY 06 - WHO is investigating reports that Islamic State militants have been showing up an Iraqi hospital in Mosul with Ebola. According to a report in Iraq's pro-gov newspaper "Al Sabaath", the disease was brought to Mosul by terrorists arriving from several countries and Africa.
JANUARY 05 - CDC and DHS will remove Mali from the list of Ebola-affected nations subject to enhaned visa and port-of-entry screening (from 5 designated airports). Also CDC will remove the Alert Level 2 Travel Notice for Mali, which advised travelers to practice enhanced preacautions when visiting that nation.
DECEMBER 30 - (1) A healthcare worker who has just returned from West Africa has been diagnosed with Ebola and is being treated in hospital in Glasgow. The woman, who arrived from Sierra Leone on Sunday night, is in isolation at Glasgow's Gartnavel Hospital. All possible contacts with the case are being investigated, including on flights to Scotland via Heathrow. UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed that the woman would be taken to a specialist unit in London.She will be flown from Glasgow and taken to the Royal Free Hospital in north London "as soon as we possibly can," Mr Hunt said.The hospital has a specialist isolation unit and treated William Pooley, the British nurse who contracted and recovered from Ebola. UPDATE (Jan 03, 2015): Condition critical. UPDATE: (Jan 13, 2015): Condition of nurse Pauline Cafferkey, 39 stable but not critical. (2) A second healthcare worker is to be tested for Ebola in Scotland after returning from Sierra Leone.The woman, who had been staying at the Torridon Youth Hostel in the Highlands, will be transferred to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for tests.
DECEMBER 24 - (1) A CDC technician will be monitored for three weeks after possibly being exposed to the Ebola virus at one of the agency's Atlanta labs, the CDC says. This is not the first incident in which the transfer from one lab to another risked exposure to potentially deadly material. In June, a CDC lab failed to ensure that anthrax samples were inactivated before transferring them to other labs. None of the dozens of lab workers involved were infected. But an investigation by the Department of Agriculture found that dangerous biological materials had been stored in unlocked refrigerators and that there was a general failure to follow safety protocols. (2) Sierra Leone's government has declared a five-day lockdown in the country's north to step up efforts to contain the Ebola epidemic, while making an exception for Christmas.
DECEMBER 24 - The Ebola crisis in West Africa that claimed its first victim exactly a year ago is likely to last until the end of 2015, according to Dr. Peter Piot who helped to discover the virus.
DECEMBER 19 - Sierra Leone's leading doctor died of Ebola on Thursday, hours after the arrival in the country of an experimental drug (ZMapp) that could have been used to treat him, the government's chief medical officer said. Victor Willoughby was diagnosed with Ebola last week after he treated a man with organ-related problems. The patient, a senior banker, was later diagnosed with Ebola and has since died. His death brings to 12 the number of Sierra Leone doctors to have contracted the virus. Eleven have died. In all, 142 health workers have been infected with the disease in the West African country and 109 have died, according to World Health Organization figures.
DECEMBER 11 - An American nurse who was exposed to Ebola while volunteering in an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone will be admitted to the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center in Maryland on Thursday, NIH announced.The center is one of 35 designated as an Ebola treatment center earlier this month by the U.S. government, and previously treated a nurse who contracted Ebola in Texas.
DECEMBER 04 - A U.S. healthcare worker who had been in West Africa and may have been exposed to the Ebola virus is being transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
NEW: Johns Hopkins personal protective equipment prototype for Ebola
NOVEMBER 29 - New diagnostic test for Ebola (from Institute Pasteur, Dakkar, Senegal) gives results in 15 min and it will be trialled in Guinea (Conakry). The reagent substance used in the test are available as dried pellets, meaning they can be used and transported at room temperature. The new test is six times faster than those currently used and the portable lab includes a solar panel, a power pack and a reader, the size of a laptop.
NOVEMBER 28 -Two young patients have been tested at a hospital in Newcastle ( Infectious Diseases Isolation Unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, one of three units outside London geared up to care for patients with infectious diseases) for Ebola.The children had shown viral symptoms and spent time in Africa. They are also undergoing tests for malaria.
NOVEMBER 21 - Ebola has officially been eradicated from the Democratic Republic of Congo (42 days), the World Health Organization declared Friday, even amid fresh concerns about the deadly virus in places like Sierra Leone and Mali.
NOVEMBER 19 - A doctor bitten by a child infected with the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone on Monday became the first person coming from an area hit by the deadly epidemic to arrive in Switzerland. The man, who was working for a Geneva-based international organization in the African country, flew to Geneva where a diagnosis at the university hospital (HUG) showed he had no sign of infection, federal authorities in Bern said. The doctor, whose citizenship was not disclosed, will nonetheless remain under observation and will be checked regularly over the next three weeks.
NOVEMBER 18 - Officials have quarantined a man who was cured of Ebola in Liberia but continued to show traces of the virus in samples of his semen after arriving in the country, the health ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry said in a statement that the Indian national had been shown to be negative for Ebola in tests conforming to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, but had been quarantined as a precautionary measure when he arrived at New Delhi airport on November 10. Later, tests of his semen detected traces of the virus.
NOVEMBER 15 - Democratic Republic of Congo declared its three-month Ebola outbreak officially over on Saturday after 42 days without recording a new case of the disease (as of Oct 4).
NOVEMBER 14 - A surgeon infected with Ebola will be transported from Sierra Leone
to The Nebraska Medical Center for treatment. The doctor, a Sierra
Leone national and legal permanent resident of the United States, is
expected to arrive this weekend, most likely Saturday. It's
not known whether the doctor was working in an Ebola treatment unit or
some other type of hospital. The surgeon is married to a U.S. citizen
and has children.
NOVEMBER 11 - (1) Animal Ebola guidance documents, hot off the press; (2) A plastic vial supposedly containing a sample of the deadly Ebola
virus has been sent from a "jihadist group" to a major New Zealand newspaper (New Zealand Herald). It arrived with a letter claiming that the liquid was a sample of
Ebola. It was understood that the mailroom was evacuated and the staff
were hosed down. Similar vial posted to NZ Parliament (Wellington).
NOVEMBER 06 - A fresh outbreak of Ebola in a part of Sierra Leone (remote district of Koinadugu) where the virus was thought to have been contained has raised fears of a new, uncontrolled infection chain that could send the death toll soaring.
NOVEMBER 04 - A Harvard researcher and his team have developed a prototype Ebola test that could detect the virus in 30 minutes and cost less than $1 to reproduce. Jim Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, said he and his team created the test in 12 hours, using just $20 of materials. The test takes molecules inside a cell drawn from a saliva or blood sample and then drops them on a pocket-sized piece of paper that contains freeze-dried biosensors — molecular switches that are activated in the presence of molecules of the Ebola virus. If, after 30 minutes, the paper turns from yellow to purple, the sample is positive for Ebola.
NOVEMBER 27 - National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the
National Institutes of Health, released promising preliminary data on a
small study that examines the safety and efficacy of one experimental
vaccine currently in development. The researchers found the vaccine
elicited an immune response in 100 percent of the study's volunteers and
did not cause any serious adverse side effects.The findings of the VRC 207 Phase 1 clinical trial were published
Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study began Sept. 2
and was conducted at the University of Maryland at Baltimore's Center
for Vaccine Development, involved 20 healthy adults, aged 18 to 50.Through
blood analysis, the researchers observed the presence of anti-Ebola
antibodies four weeks after administering the vaccine. They also
detected an increased production in a certain type of T-cells, known as
CD8T, which are necessary for the body's ability to maintain an immune
response. 
The BEST guidelines on PPE donning and doffing - by ECDC!
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ECDC_ppe.pdf Size : 3832.839 Kb Type : pdf |
NOVEMBER 03 - (1) London, UK: A woman who feared she may have Ebola (history of travel to West Africa) has tested negative for the deadly virus at St Gerge's Hospital in Tooting. (2) A doctor in Sierra Leone has died of Ebola, the fifth local doctor in the west African nation to die of the disease. Godfrey George, medical superintendent of Kambia government hospital in northern Sierra Leone, died on Sunday night, according to Sierra Leone’s government.
NOVEMBER 02 - France is treating a UN employee who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone. The victim has been placed in isolation under high security in an army training hospital (Begin) in Saint-Mande near Paris. A French nurse, who worked for Médecins sans Frontières in Liberia, was treated for Ebola at the same hospital in September and recovered. Despite around 500 reports of possible Ebola infections in France since June, not one has so far tested positive. France has 12 research hospitals ready to take in suspected Ebola cases.
OCTOBER 31 - (1) Public health officials monitoring the Ebola epidemic in West Africa say
the outbreak may have reached a turning point in which transmissions
may have begun to slow down. Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome
Trust, the organization funding a series of fast-tracked trials
of Ebola vaccines and drugs, says that although the virus will continue
to infect people in the months ahead, “it is finally becoming possible
to see some light.” (2) Two people are
suspected of having Ebola after coming into contact with a two-year-old
girl who died of the disease in Mali last week, according to data from
the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The girl may have had contact with 141 people in all, 57 of them yet to be identified.
OCTOBER 30 - Rebel Ebola Nurse Kaci Hickox Shakes Reporter’s Hand, Goes for Bike Ride in Maine while at home-quarantine.
OCTOBER 28 - (1) Blackmailers are threatening to spread Ebola in the Czech Republic unless Prague pays them a million euros' worth of the virtual Bitcoin currency. An email allegedly from the blackmailers claiming they had "biological material" from an infected patient in Liberia was published by the country's top commercial TV station "TV Nova". (2) A second Dallas nurse (Amber Vinson) who contracted Ebola is now free of the virus and
will be released from the Atlanta hospital where she's been treated, the
hospital said today.
Blackmailers are threatening to spread Ebola in the Czech Republic unless Prague pays them a million euros' worth of the virtual Bitcoin currency, police said Monday.
An e-mail allegedly from the blackmailers claiming they had "biological material" from an infected patient in Liberia was published by the country's top commercial TV station, TV Nova, on Monday.
- See more at: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/europe/story/blackmailers-threaten-czech-republic-ebola-outbreak-bitcoin-currency-2014102#sthash.PaO2XVHS.dpufBlackmailers are threatening to spread Ebola in the Czech Republic unless Prague pays them a million euros' worth of the virtual Bitcoin currency, police said Monday.
An e-mail allegedly from the blackmailers claiming they had "biological material" from an infected patient in Liberia was published by the country's top commercial TV station, TV Nova, on Monday.
- See more at: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/europe/story/blackmailers-threaten-czech-republic-ebola-outbreak-bitcoin-currency-2014102#sthash.PaO2XVHS.dpufBlackmailers are threatening to spread Ebola in the Czech Republic unless Prague pays them a million euros' worth of the virtual Bitcoin currency, police said Monday.
An e-mail allegedly from the blackmailers claiming they had "biological material" from an infected patient in Liberia was published by the country's top commercial TV station, TV Nova, on Monday.
- See more at: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/europe/story/blackmailers-threaten-czech-republic-ebola-outbreak-bitcoin-currency-2014102#sthash.PaO2XVHS.dpufOCTOBER 27 - (1) Nurse Kaci Hickox, who was ordered quarantined at a New Jersey hospital after returning from West Africa, will be discharged, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's office announced today. A battle of words broke out Sunday between Hickox, who returned home from Ebola-ravaged West Africa only to be ordered into quarantine, and the governor, with the nurse telling CNN that her "basic human rights have been violated" and that Christie was responsible. She has requested to be taken to Maine, a statement from the governor's office says. (2) U.S. soldiers returning from Liberia are being placed in isolation in Vicenza, Italy out of concern for the Ebola virus, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports. The soldiers being monitored include Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams who was the commander of the U.S. Army in Africa but turned over duties to the 101st Airborne Division over the weekend, Martin reports. There are currently 11 soldiers in isolation.They apparently were met by Carabinieri in full hazmat suits. If the policy remains in effect, everyone returning from Liberia - several hundred - will be placed in isolation for 21 days. Thirty are expected in today, Martin reports.
OCTOBER 26 - Five-year-old boy is being tested for Ebola at New York hospital
(Belleview) after returning from family trip to west Africa (Guinea)
after exeriencing vomiting and high fever. Five family members set into
quarantine at their appartment. Hospital staff are reportedly being refused service at local restaurants. UPDATE: Negative.
OCTOBER 24 - A Doctors Without Borders physician (33yo) who recently returned to New York from West Africa (Guinea) has tested positive for the Ebola virus, becoming the first diagnosed case in New York. He is in isolation and being treated at New York's Bellevue Hospital. The doctor, currently in ICU, went for a jog, may have gone to a restaurant, traveled the city's vast subway system and went bowling before feeling ill, but authorities stressed that the likelihood of him spreading the virus was low...
OCTOBER 20 - A 21 day period for quarantine may result in the release of individuals with a 0.2 – 12% risk of release prior to full opportunity for the incubation to proceed. It is suggested that a detailed cost-benefit assessment, including considering full transmission risks, needs to occur in order to determine the appropriate quarantine period for potentially exposed individuals.
OCTOBER 17 - (1) A patient with Ebola-like symptoms has been admitted to Pristina Hosital in Kosovo. (2) WHO declares Senegal free of Ebola (country reached the 42 days benchmark - twice the incubation period - without a new case).
A patient with Ebola-like symptoms have been admitted in the Pristina hospital in Kosovo.
The presence of Ebola virus still has not been confirmed. Lab tests and analysis are underway. However, doctors claim that the symptoms resembled the deadly disease.
According to the media, the patient could have come in contact with the virus during his pilgrimage.
- See more at: http://www.independent.mk/articles/10461/Patient+with+Ebola-like+Symptoms+Admitted+in+Pristina+Hospital#sthash.58GYVo0Z.dpufA patient with Ebola-like symptoms have been admitted in the Pristina hospital in Kosovo.
The presence of Ebola virus still has not been confirmed. Lab tests and analysis are underway. However, doctors claim that the symptoms resembled the deadly disease.
According to the media, the patient could have come in contact with the virus during his pilgrimage.
- See more at: http://www.independent.mk/articles/10461/Patient+with+Ebola-like+Symptoms+Admitted+in+Pristina+Hospital#sthash.58GYVo0Z.dpuf