VDU has moved house....

If you're looking for new posts about viruses and virus-related stuff (which could be anything really!), from now on please go over to the new site with its easy-to-remember address...

virologydownunder.com

Hope to see you there!

Cheers,
-Ian

This little MERS-CoV infected piggy had RNA, but that little piggy with indirect contact had none...

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900 words on some general stuff about viruses and those other bugs...

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Ebola virus disease over in the DRC....

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Editor's Note #27: Anakin Fencewalker joins the Force...

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Another canary in the same coalmine - mild MERS may be bad news...

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Working for health can make you sick....

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Climate and science denial....

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Ebola in the DRC: list of border-checking countries at seven...

Starting from WHO Regional Office for Africa Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) Situation Report No. 2,[1] there have been an increasing number of countries that are screening ill-looking people for EVD at their ports of entry. Currently [7] there are 7 and they are:

• Kenya
• Nigeria
• Rwanda
• South Africa
• United Republic of Tanzania
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe 

Quite a few more than I listed yesterday. 

Latest EVD figures form the DRC.
Click on image to enlarge.

No borders are closed to travellers from, or who have travelled through, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is good news.

Screenshot from SitRep No.5.[1]
Click on image to enlarge.

Presumably this screening relies on the appearance of signs of illness, questionnaires and perhaps thermal camera images to identify feverish people.

As I alluded to yesterday, these efforts are not very effective at actually picking up EVD cases from among a milieu of other febrile illness that stumble through a port of entry.

Studies - some of which are summed up in this Canadian review [2] - are usually not supportive of any practical benefit from using fever as a screening tool to pick out a single disease in passing travellers.[3,4,5] 

However, these screening efforts do play a role in making citizens and politicians feel better and more useful. The precautions may also be helpful in keeping travel flowing.[6] Whether the continued flow of travel during an epidemic that may leak from a hotzone is a good thing or not will no doubt (once again) be dissected after a more more transmissible pathogen sweeps across the world I expect.

References....

1. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/255463/1/EbolaDRC-1652017-eng.pdf?ua=1
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0071254/
3. http://afludiary.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/study-thermal-scanners-pandemic.html
4. http://afludiary.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/eid-journal-evaluating-border-entry.html
5. http://afludiary.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/why-airport-screening-cant-stop-mers.html
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27390092
7. http://www.afro.who.int/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=10836&Itemid=2593

Ebola virus disease in the DRC: first graphs...

The World Health Organization have apparently found an outlet for their Ebola virus disease (EVD) reports for 2017's Democratic Republic of the Congo outbreak.

It's not the Disease Outbreak News site. It's not the WHO media page. It's not any of the past EVD outbreak pages on the central WHO site.

Turns out the Situation Reports (SitReps) are to be found on a new page on the WHO African site.[1] Okay. Why not? Found it eventually. I've plotted the first 4 (they started from 15th of May) below. Not much to say about trends at this early stage obviously!

Click on image to enlarge.

Don't go expecting to find how we got to the totals shown on the 15th - those may well be lost details. Or they may come out later. We'll have to wait and see. Outbreaks viewed from the public point of view are very much about patience and trying not to leap to any dramatic conclusions - like those decisions taken by at least one country in Africa to start screening passengers for signs of EVD.[2] It's your budget guys - spend up if it makes you feel safe. At this stage, and perhaps ever, its a pretty wasteful exercise though; apart from your citizens seeing you doing something.

Back to numbers. I'm pretty impressed with the WHOAfro SitRep - the 4th Report carries a detailed table of cases, deaths and locations and also a timeline graphic (below) which is fantastic. 

Click on image to enlarge.This image is part of SitRep No.4.[3]

And to wrap up, just for a glimpse of what has come before and where we are now (and because I promised @kristindownie I would!), I've also added an updated "EVD through time" bar graph. Where we are with the current outbreak total is highlighted using a red arrow and the towering totals of West Africa are indicated by yellow arrows.

Click on image to enlarge.

References...

1. http://www.afro.who.int/en/ebola/ebola-situation-reports.html
2. http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/231328-ebola-nigeria-intensifies-screening-at-airports.html
3. http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/255526/1/EbolaDRC-1852017-eng.pdf?ua=1