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| Science & Technology |
| The US has already survived a case of viral hemorrhagic fever brought here from Africa - in 2008 |
| 2014-08-04 |
| RTWT: The only reason the case was actually diagnosed is because the Colorado patient who survived her case of Marburg HF later read about the death of another tourist who had visited the same bat-infested cave in Africa that she had visited before returning to the USA, and asked for herself to be re-tested with that in mind. While the Colorado patient had been hospitalized, she was given some tests for Marburg & Ebola, including the standard screening tests done by the CDC, but apparently not the right kind of tests. After she recovered, some more sophisticated testing found Marburg viral fragments in her blood drawn when she was sick, in addition to an appropriate antibody level in her blood 6.5 months after she recovered. Retrospectively, they tracked down 260 contacts of this patient -- none turned out to have been sick with anything resembling a virus during the appropriate time frame. They also tracked down other people who had visited the same African cave at the same time as the patient-survivor. None of those got sick either. Marburg virus in Africa has proven to be about as deadly as Ebola in Africa. It took a year before the CDC could notify the WHO & the Ugandan health ministry of this particular case. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |