The Biden administration started screening travelers from Uganda for Ebola on Thursday amidst a deadly variant outbreak that has not been proven to respond to existing therapeutics or vaccines.
Ten deaths and 44 cases have been confirmed in the East African nation, and around two dozen other deaths are under investigation. Although no cases have been reported elsewhere, all travelers entering the U.S. who have been to Uganda in the past 21 days will soon be diverted to five major airports — JFK in New York, Newark in New Jersey, O’Hare in Chicago, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, and Dulles near Washington, D.C. — to ensure everyone is screened.
“To date in this outbreak, cases have only been confirmed in Uganda and no suspected, probable, or confirmed cases of Ebola have been reported in the United States, and the risk of Ebola domestically is currently low,” the U.S. State Department said.
It’s unclear when travelers will start being diverted to those five airports. Sources reportedly said that around 140 people who have recently been in Uganda land in the United States each day, and the majority of them already end up at one of the five airports anyway. Those five airports also already have experience receiving travelers in need of Ebola screenings.
Unlike the novel coronavirus, Ebola does not spread through the air, and transmission requires direct contact with the fluids of an infected animal or person, dead or alive. But once infected, the fatality rate is between 25% and 90%, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The last major Ebola outbreak in Africa infected 28,000 people and killed 11,000, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leonne, and Guinea, between 2013 and 2016.
Initial symptoms of Ebola include fever, fatigue, muscle pain, sore throat, and headache, but these gradually worsen to include diarrhea, vomiting, and sometimes internal or external bleeding. The body soon begins to shut down. As many of the symptoms are similar to other diseases, such as malaria and meningitis, an Ebola diagnosis needs to be confirmed with laboratory testing.
“When people become infected with Ebola, they do not start developing signs or symptoms right away,” reads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. “This period between exposure to an illness and having symptoms is known as the incubation period. A person can only spread Ebola to other people after they develop signs and symptoms of Ebola.”
Uganda has experienced five Sudan virus outbreaks since 2000, according to CDC data. Three of the outbreaks resulted in fewer than a dozen laboratory-confirmed deaths each. One of them, the Sudan Ebolavirus outbreak of 2000, killed 224 people.
Stat News, a medical news website, reports that Uganda is working with global health officials to establish clinical trials in the hopes of finding an existing vaccine that works against the Sudan strain. There are reportedly six vaccine candidates in total, but only three are ready for human trials.
