Survivor-induced Ebola outbreaks indicate long reach of the virus

JOHANNESBURG – Two persistent Ebola outbreaks in Africa appear to have been triggered by survivors of earlier illnesses, according to a study that highlights how long the virus can lie in parts of the body. person, just to reappear months, or even years, after the original illness.

The findings are based on tests of virus samples taken last month from outbreaks of the disease at the sites of the two largest Ebola infections in history: Guinea and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. These pandemics – including the one that killed more than 11,000 people across West Africa between 2013 and 2016 – have led to the development of Ebola vaccines and treatments that have since hoped to turn around the fight. against one of the deadliest viruses in the world.

Now, researchers are trying to understand whether these life-saving scientific advances have planted seeds of new strains of the hemorrhagic fever.

Doctors have long known that Ebola can remain dormant in areas protected from the body’s immune response – such as the human eyes, brain and testes – for months after a person’s first infection. to clean. In 2016, scientists recorded how a Guinean man, who contracted Ebola in November 2014, transmitted the virus to a sexual partner about 15 months later.

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