A review essay in Lancet Infectious Diseases assesses what is known regarding the sequelae of Ebola virus disease, including possible delayed virus clearance. The authors discuss some of the key challenges regarding the provision of care to survivors – calling it the “emergency within the emergency” – and implementation of necessary future research.
Researchers at Middle Tennessee State University investigated the potential of basic Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) models to describe the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Meliandou, Guinea. They found that density-dependent transmission and mortality-induced behavioral changes shaped the course of the Ebola epidemic in Meliandou, while frequency-dependent transmission, disease-induced emigration, and infection-induced behavioral changes are not consistent with the data from that particular epidemic.
A study in Preventive Medicine proposes an alternative policy for Ebola entry screening at airports in the United States. This alternative policy considers a social contact tracing (SCT) risk level, in addition to the current health risk level used by the CDC.
A study evaluating the performance of the Cepheid GeneXpert Ebola assay on clinical venipuncture whole blood (WB) and buccal swab (BS) specimens found the assay had excellent performance compared to an established RT-PCR benchmark on WB and BS samples in a field laboratory setting. The authors said future studies should evaluate feasibility and performance outside of a biocontainment laboratory setting to facilitate expanded access to testing.
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