Why Has Nurse Amber Vinson Recovered From Ebola So Quickly?
Original article from: NBC News posted on October 23, 2014. By Maggie Fox
Amber Vinson’s blood tested negative for Ebola virus just nine days after she was first diagnosed. Her fellow nurse, Nina Pham, is now in good condition.
The two nurses infected when they treated the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, have seemingly fared better than most patients with the disease. Is that thanks to early treatment, did the two nurses just get a smaller dose of the virus to start with, or are other factors at work?
Doctors familiar with Ebola say it’s almost impossible to know. Only seven people have ever been treated for Ebola in the United States. Six recovered and only Duncan died. Even with such small numbers it’s a stark contrast to the epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, where the World Health Organization says 70 percent of patients are dying.
“It is rare that recovery happens this fast,” said Thomas Geisbert, an expert on infectious diseases and Ebola treatment at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “It could be related to a number of things including the fact that these patients were diagnosed in the U.S. and treatment was presumably initiated quickly,” he told NBC News.