Rather than stemming from a virus that jumped from an animal to a person, this outbreak might have originated from someone who had a dormant virus.
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in Guinea was most likely sparked by someone infected during the outbreak seven years ago, a new study shows. Viruses from both outbreaks are almost genetically identical, hinting that the virus did not jump from an animal to people, as scientists expected, but that it had lurked hidden in a human body for years.
“With this news, I was really, really shocked,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Potential cases of Ebola began emerging in the West African nation in late January, and Guinean health officials declared an outbreak on February 13 after three people tested positive for the virus. The region hadn’t seen an outbreak since the one in 2013–2016, which claimed over 11,000 lives. A separate, unrelated outbreak in the Congo was declared on February 7.
As of March 6, 29 cases and 13 deaths
had been reported in both countries, according to Africa Centres for
Disease Control and Prevention. A genetic analysis found that four
viruses from people infected in the Guinea outbreak were the close
relatives of viruses that had infected people in 2014, according to a trio of preliminary reports
posted March 12 at virological.org. Only about a dozen mutations
separate these new cases from the 2014 cases. That’s far fewer than the
more than 100 mutations scientists expect would accumulate over that
period if there were sustained transmission of the virus.
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