Ebola Cases May Rise to 1.4 Million in 3 Months

Researchers Offer Stark and Differing Forecasts

**VIDEO**

Skippy Massey
Humboldt Sentinel

Cover your mouth, wash those hands, and be careful where you go and what you touch like Mom said. 
It’s looking worse by the moment.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report today predicting as many as 550,000 to 1.4 million cases of the Ebola virus in Liberia and Sierra Leone alone, by the end of January.

The CDC calculations are based, in part, on assumptions that cases have been dramatically underreported.  Other projections haven’t made the same kind of attempt that may have been missed in official counts.

CDC scientists conclude there may be as many as 21,000 reported and unreported cases in just those two countries as soon as the end of this month.

“The model shows — and I don’t think this has been shown by other modeling tools out there — that a surge now can break the back of the epidemic.  It also shows that there are severe costs of delay,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a press conference.

The agency’s numbers seem “somewhat pessimistic” and do not account for infection control efforts already underway, said Dr. Richard Wenzel, a Virginia Commonwealth University scientist who formerly led the International Society for Infectious Diseases.

Separately, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned in a new report that the number of people infected with the Ebola virus could reach 20,000 in six weeks if efforts to contain the outbreak are not accelerated.

The outbreak has killed around 2,800 people in five West African countries this year.  An estimated 5,800 people have been infected with the hemorrhagic virus, which has no known cure.

Doctors Without Borders said the way the virus has spread is unlike any previous Ebola outbreaks, raising alarm among health workers. 

“Ebola is usually a localized, rural disease, but this outbreak has a broad geographic spread and is reaching cities,” a Doctors Without Borders spokesman said.

The WHO has repeatedly said that the actual number of infections and deaths is almost certainly higher than the official figures.

The report, published six months after the first cases were reported, is far more pessimistic than an earlier survey published last month, in which the WHO suggested that the number of cases could reach 20,000 by the middle of next year.  According to The New York Times, the report also raises the possibility that the outbreak will cause Ebola to become endemic in West Africa.

The WHO said the Ebola outbreak was “pretty much contained” in Nigeria and Senegal.  However, the death rate among infected is currently at around 70 percent in the other three countries touched by the infection:  Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.  Of those three, Liberia has reported the most Ebola cases, at just over 3,000.

The epidemic has overwhelmed the healthcare systems of all three countries, which rank among the world’s poorest. There aren’t enough hospital beds, health workers, or even basic necessities such as soap and water.

Last week, the US announced it would build more than a dozen medical centers in Liberia and send 3,000 troops to help.  Britain and France have also pledged to build treatment centers in Sierra Leone and Guinea and the World Bank and UNICEF have sent more than $1 million worth of supplies to the region.

~Via Google News, LA Times, YouTube