Ebola spread in central Africa could match 2014 record outbreak, US health officials say

Central Africa’s Ebola outbreak could spread to be similar in scale to the worst outbreak in history, west Africa’s 2014-2016 outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people, according to a new analysis by US health officials.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday published a range of scenarios generated by computer models, from 10,000 cases to more than 20,000. In the west Africa outbreak, more than 28,000 cases were reported.

The analysis from the CDC said cases could grow to 20,000 or more, depending on how quickly infected people are isolated to slow the spread.

Incident manager for the CDC’s Ebola response, Dr Satish Pillai, said without strong public health interventions, “the modelling work suggests an outbreak of that scale is possible”.

Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center in the United States, said the modelling “affirms what we have worried about since the beginning: this outbreak is following dangerous trajectory” if more is not done to stop its spread.

But she cautioned it can be extremely difficult to predict how outbreaks will progress. “I wouldn’t read too much into the specific numbers. It’s really hard to make an accurate projection when you have limited data,” she said.

The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday there have been about 400 confirmed cases, including 63 deaths. Experts say there are probably other cases that haven’t been diagnosed or reported.

The viruses that cause Ebola are spread through contact with body fluid such as vomit, blood and semen. There are no specific treatments or vaccines for the Bundibugyo virus at the heart of the current outbreak. The disease is often fatal.

The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency in May. Some experts believe infections may have been occurring in February, but health officials initially tested for a different kind of Ebola virus.