At the gravesite in a northern Liberia village, there are no religious or traditional burial rites. No ceremony, no mourning, no family members, and no final goodbyes. Nothing but a group of men dressed in space-suit-like outfits, cautiously throwing the dead body into the grave, they pause only to toss in anything else they are wearing that came into contact with the deceased.
For the first time, scientists have been able to follow the spread of an Ebola outbreak almost in real time, by sequencing the virus’ genome from people in Sierra Leone. The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, offer new insights into how the outbreak started in West Africa and how fast the virus is mutating. A international team of researchers sequenced 99 Ebola genomes, with extremely high accuracy, from 78 people diagnosed with Ebola in Sierra Leone in June.
Five West African Ebola researchers died from the virus before they ever saw their work in print. The Harvard University-led study, published Thursday in Science magazine, found that the virus has mutated over the course of the 2014 outbreak, which has killed more than 1,500 people since its March onset. The work emphasized that the rapid variations could make vaccine and treatment development difficult — a point further underscored by the Ebola deaths of its authors.
A man infected with Ebola traveled to Senegal, bringing to the country the first confirmed case of the dreaded disease that has hit four other West African nations and killed more than 1,500 people, the Ministry of Health said Friday. The infected person, a university student from Guinea, sought treatment at a hospital in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, on Tuesday but gave no indication he might have Ebola, Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck told reporters. The next day, an epidemiological surveillance team in Guinea alerted Senegalese authorities that they had lost track of a person who had had contact with sick people.
The West African Ebola outbreak took a more deadly turn Friday with the World Health Organization announcing an estimated 500 new cases this week — the biggest jump in infections so far. Most of the new cases arose in Liberia, the U.N.
Argentine ants, Linepithema humile, are on the march in drought-stricken California, and they’re invading Bay Area homes in droves. It’s considered one of the most invasive species on the planet. “The Argentine ant is a species introduced to our environment – and it has invaded our ant fauna,” said Brian Fisher, curator of entomology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
In computer models, while the southern portions of the western United States (California, Arizona, New Mexico) will likely face drought, the researchers show the chances for drought in the northwestern states (Washington, Montana, Idaho) may decrease. Prolonged droughts around the world have occurred throughout history. Ault points to the recent ‘Big Dry’ in Australia and modern-era drought in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa eventually could exceed 20,000 cases, more than six times as many as are known now, the World Health Organization said Thursday as the United States announced plans to test an experimental Ebola vaccine. Currently, about half of the people infected with Ebola have died, so in a worst-case scenario the death toll could reach 10,000, the agency said, according to a plan released Thursday on how to stop the outbreak. The UN agency’s latest figures show that 1,552 people have died from the virus from among the 3,069 cases reported so far in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria.
Ice over Iceland’s rumbling Bardarbunga volcano has melted to reveal a row of one-kilometer wide “cauldrons,” possibly due to a sub-glacial eruption, the country’s meteorological office said late on Wednesday. Rumblings at Iceland’s largest volcano system for about a week have raised worries of an eruption that could spell trouble for air travel. In 2010, an ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano closed much of Europe’s airspace for six days.
The Ebola outbreak “continues to accelerate” in West Africa and has killed 1,552 people, the World Health Organization said Thursday. The total number of cases stands at 3,069, with 40% occurring in the past three weeks. “However, most cases are concentrated in only a few localities,” the WHO said.
The Democratic Republic of Congo said as many as 13 people have died of Ebola in a separate outbreak from that raging in three West African nations. Laboratory tests were positive for Ebola in two cases in a remote village in the northwest, and 11 other deaths are suspected of being due to the virus, Information Minister Lambert Mende said on Monday. The strain of Ebola in the Congo is different to that in West Africa, Mr Mende said.
The residents of the Mount Barclay Community within the Johnsonville Township, outside of Monrovia woke up on last Friday morning in total dismay when the remains of dead Ebola victims were reportedly seen, eaten by dogs, something reminiscent of the brutal civil war here, when dogs ate dead bodies on the streets. The Liberian Government, through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, buried some unaccounted-for corpses, suspected to have died from the Ebola Virus in that township few weeks ago. The burial was done in a hurry at night following a standoff in the day between residence and the Ministry of Health burial team.
“It’s even worse than I’d feared,” Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday of the Ebola outbreak rampaging through West Africa. “Every day this outbreak goes on, it increases the risk for another export to another country.
Extreme drought conditions have become so harsh for the Central Valley community of East Porterville, many of its residents dependent on their own wells have run out of water. Roughly 300 homes have received a three-week supply of bottled water after Tulare County officials discovered their wells had gone dry. In all, county officials distributed 15,552 1-gallon bottles of water, and have been filling a 2,500-gallon tank with nonpotable water so residents can flush toilets and bathe.
A few days ago I had a conversation with the Chief Operating Officer for our agricultural fund in Chile. We were discussing water, and he told me that roughly 60% of California right now is suffering “extreme drought” conditions. 30% of the state is in “severe drought”.
If hundreds of doctors and nurses are becoming infected with Ebola, what chance is the general public going to have? This is not just a question that many of us are asking. As you will see below, this is a question that the World Health Organization is asking.