Latest development, per an “NBC exclusive”:
The first trial of an Ebola vaccine in Africa has started, researchers said Thursday, with the vaccination of three health care workers in Mali…
It’ll be months before any vaccine would be available, and even then it will be a small amount, probably used to protect health care workers. But experts say it’s a vital first step to getting doctors, nurses and technicians to even come and help fight the outbreak. Health workers are among those at highest risk of getting infected…
Mali isn’t affected by Ebola but experts agree it’s important to conduct trials in Africa. Another trial is expected to start in Gambia soon…
The vaccine is made using a common cold virus called an adenovirus that does not make people sick. It’s had a little piece of Ebola virus attached – a small part that cannot cause disease, either. In animals, such a vaccine has been shown to stimulate the body’s immune response against Ebola virus.
The trial has been set up quickly. Usually, it takes six to 11 months to get a vaccine trial started because of all the regulatory and ethical hoops. This one got started in two months…
Thomas Duncan has died, so he will not be charged in either Dallas or his native Liberia. The other Ebola-related news out of Texas is more positive, at least for those most intimately concerned:
… Officials on Thursday announced that a local sheriff’s deputy examined for possible infection with the virus had tested negative and was sent home from the hospital.
None of the other 48 people who officials say had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died of Ebola at a hospital here Wednesday, have showed symptoms of infection. Because no one has been exposed in 11 days, officials say, the likelihood of a new case is diminishing.
But live images on local television of an ambulance racing the deputy to the hospital on Wednesday were enough to convince many here that Ebola was more dangerous than officials were letting on….
Some people in the community have been shunned for their ties to Ebola. Erick McCallum, who owns the company that sterilized the apartment where Mr. Duncan became ill, said he lost a lot of business because of it. He said some of his employees, who also work as local firefighters, have been told not to come to work at the fire station for a few weeks.
“It’s not rational, it’s just a lack of knowledge,” he said. The director of the C.D.C., Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, became frustrated upon hearing that parents were keeping their children out of school.
“Oh, my goodness,” he said in a telephone interview, taking a long sigh. “I sat on the couch of a survivor in Africa holding her hand. Her little child was bouncing off the walls because the neighbors would not allow her to go outside and play with the other children.” He said he expected that type of reaction among uneducated people in developing countries, but not in the United States, adding, “I’m saddened.”…
New screening procedures have been announced:
Federal health officials will require temperature checks for the first time at five major American airports for people arriving from the three West African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus. However, health experts said the measures were more likely to calm a worried public than to prevent many people with Ebola from entering the country…
American health officials believe Mr. Duncan did not have a fever when he arrived in the United States, a view seconded by his family. “There’s a sense that this is a be-all-and-end-all and that this will put up an iron curtain, but it won’t,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. “At the very most, all we are buying here is some reduction of anxiety.” He added, “That’s worth something because, at the moment, we have a much larger outbreak of anxiety than we have of Ebola.”