With the Ebola virus making its way into the United States, it has understandably caused quite a stir. With plenty of media coverage and the frightening buzzwords of “epidemic” and “death” being thrown around it is important to take a closer look at this disease, especially how contagious it really is.
First lets start out talking about what this virus is. The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is a disease that is transmitted from wild animals and is then spread from human to human.
It first appeared in 1976 with isolated outbreaks in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It occurred near the Ebola River in the Congo giving the disease its name.
It is thought that fruit bats are natural Ebola virus hosts (World Health Organization). Ebola is thought to have been introduced to the human population through contact with blood or other bodily fluids from infected animals such as chimpanzees, fruit bats, or gorillas that are found dead in the forest.
The virus is transmitted from human-to-human through direct contact with those infected including: their mucus membranes, broken skin, blood, secretions, or other bodily fluids. (WHO).
The incubation period, from the infection to the onset of symptoms, can range from 2 to 21 day. A person is not infectious until symptoms begin to develop.
The first symptoms that appear are fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache, and a sore throat (Mayo Clinic). Vomiting, diarrhea, rash, and internal/external bleeding soon follow these primary symptoms.
Without prompt treatment, death soon follows. The World Health Organization estimates that 70% of those infected with the virus in West Africa have died.
Now that we know more about the disease, we can begin to look at how contagious it is.
The director of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, recently stated that he has “no doubt that we will control this importation, or case, of Ebola so that it does not spread widely in this country.”
This confidence comes from the R0 (R nought), which tells you how contagious a disease is by giving the average number of people who get the disease from one sick person during an outbreak. The R0 for Ebola is 1.5 to 2 (NPR). This means that, on average, one or two people will catch the disease from one sick person during an outbreak.
To give this number a little more meaning, it is beneficial to look at the R0 numbers for some other disease. Hepatitis C is equivalent to Ebola with a 2. While HIV and SARS have an R0 of 4, Mumps has an R0 of 10, and Measles is the most contagious of this group with an 18 (NPR).
What makes Ebola more frightening at the moment is the fact that we do not have a vaccination for it, unlike the Measles and Mumps.
While the CDC is confident in their control of the disease, there will most likely be a handful of cases seen here in the U.S. Americans need to pay more attention to the people suffering in Africa, who have an underdeveloped health system that cannot handle this kind of disease like we can in the U.S.
While this disease persists in Africa, there will always be the opportunity for it to spread to other countries and cause an epidemic. But, if we pump resources into the source of the disease, we could not only protect our country but also save countless lives in West Africa.
Zach Heppner
Viewpoints Editor
About Post Author
