Oregon Health Department monitoring four people with Ebola | Status

“People in Oregon are at low risk,” OHA said in a statement.

The OHA said it follows public health protocols to notify state residents when someone in the area of ​​the major virus comes and goes back to Oregon.

Both Ebola and COVID-19 are viral infections, but they have different spreads and deadlines.

COVID-19 can spread rapidly through the respiratory droplets of an infected person. The World Health Organization reports that the global mortality rate of COVID-19 is about 3.4% of all infected people. Approximately 2.75 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide are due to the rapid spread that has caused 125 million infections.

Ebola spreads through the blood or fluids of the symptomatic infected person. It limits the spread of the virus, but it is much more deadly — an estimated 50% of those infected people die.

Healthcare workers and staff who treat patients with Ebola are at particular risk and can become ill not only from the patient, but also from the vomit, feces, and belongings of the infected person.

Ebola can spread through sex with an infected person. Infections have also been reported while treating the corpses of victims of Ebola for burial and infection through breast milk of infected mothers.

Unlike COVID-19, asymptomatic people with Ebola cannot spread the Ebola virus.

Ebola treatments and vaccines were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2020. Outbreaks occur in areas with low vaccination levels.

Health officials said health officials needed to balance the level of potential threat to the general public with the privacy of individuals who were in the area of ​​the outbreak but did not show symptoms.

Disclosure of more information can create unfounded fear of the person or location, and Lehman says that people self-report their presence in the area and keep in touch with public health authorities. He said it would prevent him from doing so.

“It’s really a double-edged sword,” Leman said.

Oregon passed the Ebola reporting protocol in 2014, 2015 and 2019, Lehman said. No one in Oregon has been infected with Ebola in the past.

The current warning was issued after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea.

On February 7, the Democratic Republic of the Congo reported an outbreak in Butembo, North Kivu. According to the latest reports, 12 people have been infected and 6 have died. Formerly known as Zaire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa. The population is 87 million.

The Lancet, a British medical journal, reported that an outbreak occurred on February 14 in the province of Nzerekore in southeastern Guinea in West Africa, causing 18 Ebola hemorrhagic fever and 9 deaths in recent weeks. Guinea has a population of 12.4 million.

“Occurrences are confined to small areas of the country and not in large, densely populated areas,” OHA said in a statement.

Both countries were central to the early outbreaks of Ebola.

According to Lehman, people traveling between Oregon and the two countries may have medical teams, religious missionaries, national visitors, or come back from the country to help prevent illness. May include inhabitants of.

The OHA does not reveal where the Oregon people are currently, but their whereabouts are known and local public health authorities are included in the potential response or care.

According to Lehman, the incubation period for Ebola is typically 2 to 21 days, and the four monitored are believed to be near the end of that period.

When symptoms occur, they develop rapidly.

“It hits you like a lot of bricks,” Leman said. “Fever, very high, muscle aches, chills.”

Other symptoms include bruising, bleeding, and diarrhea of ​​unknown cause.

The virus was first isolated during two outbreaks in 1976 in the villages of Yambuku in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The village is on the banks of the Ebola River and is the origin of the name of the disease.

Researchers believe that the first case was an infection that was transmitted from bats and other animals to humans, and then the virus mutated to allow human-to-human transmission.

West African countries reported outbreaks in 1978 and 1979, and no cases were reported again until 1994. Another calm began in 1997, but there have been 32 outbreaks since 2000.

The 2014-2016 outbreak was rated as epidemic by the World Health Organization. We recorded 28,616 cases and 11,323 deaths in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The outbreak has spread to more than 12 other countries in western and southern Africa.

During the epidemic, 11 cases and one death were reported by the US CDC. Almost all were medical patients evacuated from Africa or airline passengers who were ill and hospitalized upon arrival. Two US nurses dealing with Ebola patients were infected, but both survived.

One health care worker from the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain was infected while treating a patient with Ebola. Everything survived. A Russian researcher working on a vaccine was accidentally injected with Ebola and died.