Virus World

By cutting trees in response to international demand for tobacco, farmers induced wildlife to start eating virus-laden bat guano.  Zoonotic diseases, or illnesses transmitted from animals to humans, account for about three quarters of new infectious diseases around the world, including some that could lead to pandemics. The risk of a pathogen jumping from an animal to a human increases when people encroach on ecosystems and cause relationships to be disrupted between species—but how that risk actually becomes a reality can be unpredictable and difficult to untangle. A new paper published this week in Communications Biology shines rare light on one such case study: an example showing how international demand for tobacco led to habitat alterations in Uganda that seemingly drove chimpanzees and other species to begin consuming bat guano for mineral nutrients. In that process, the animals might have been exposed to more than two dozen viruses, including a novel cousin of the COVID-causing pathogen SARS-CoV-2...

Researchers in Uganda have launched the largest-ever trial of the experimental Ebola vaccine that is expected to be deployed in neighboring Congo, where a deadly outbreak has killed over 1,800 people. The trial of the Janssen Pharmaceuticals vaccine involves up to 800 people in the western district of Mbarara and is supported by Doctors without Borders and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Already more than 180,000 people in Congo’s yearlong outbreak have received an experimental but effective Merck vaccine, but health experts worry about the availability of doses as the virus now spreads in a major city, Goma, along the Rwanda border. The wife and 1-year-old daughter of the man who died this week of Ebola in Goma now have the disease. Both the wife and child were doing well in treatment, Congo’s new Ebola response coordinator, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, told reporters on Friday. But he warned that about half of the cases in this outbreak are going undetected and at that rate “this epidemic could last two or three years.” The current goal is to strengthen surveillance and bring the detection rate to 80%, he said.

But he warned that about half of the cases in this outbreak are going undetected and at that rate “this epidemic could last two or three years.” The current goal is to strengthen surveillance and bring the detection rate to 80%, he said. Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks in the past. While it is currently free of the virus, three people died in June after crossing into the country’s Kasese district on an unguarded footpath. Their family members were taken back to Congo for treatment.