Thursday, July 3, 2014

The Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Sierra-Leone and Liberia is getting out of control. Latest number are 759 cases and 476 deaths (63% fatality) making this the largest outbreak of Ebola on record. Net highest was in 2000 in Uganda with ~400 cases. Major concern since it is now spreading in the cities of these countries and the population is not cooperating in containing it by ignoring the recommendations about how to handle patients and dead bodies. Also, major ignorance causing population to attack and stone doctors and nurses from Doctors without Borders and WHO, saying that there is a conspiracy on the part of the government to deplete the population. I appeared on CNN today to discuss the situation. July 4-8, 2014 – Interesting 4th of July weekend. Found out from Deb Persaud and Hannah Gay that the “Mississippi baby” rebounded at 27 months following D/Cing of ART. Baby is 46 months old. Unfortunately, so much for the “cure” baby. We are sequencing the virus now to determine if this is not a “new” infection, i.e. abuse from an HIV-infected person. More on this later. Also, heard (and spent many hours on conference calls) that an FDA employee who was cleaning out a cold room in Building 29A (FDA building on NIH campus) found a cardboard box that contained 6 glass undisturbed vials labelled “variola”. Likely there unnoticed since the 1950s. CDC and FBI notified. Good news is that leaks did not occur and within a couple of days, the CDC came up to NIH, area secured by FBI, and material flown down to CDC on FBI plane. Examined there by Select Agent people and PCR’d to confirm smallpox. Will determine if viable within 1 week and will be destroyed as witnessed by WHO. Technically, the presence of this material in Building 29A was a violation of an international agreement to destroy all smallpox samples except for 2 aliquots kept at CDC and at VICTOR in Russia.