An Ebola Vaccine Gets Its First Real-World Test
Original article from WIRED by Adam Rogers
May 21, 2018The Ebola virus kills half the people who get it, and it’s a tragically familiar disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since scientists first characterized the disease in 1976, Congo has had nine outbreaks. Now it’s happening again: To date the country has seen 46 possible or confirmed cases, and 26 people are dead.
But this time is different. Four cases are in a city—Mbandaka, with more than a million people and easy transport to the megacity of Kinshasa. That has chilling implications for the potential spread of the infection. “In a rural area you might have had 10 contacts, but in a urban area after two days of fever you might have been in contact with 50, 60,” says Micaela Serafini, medical director of MSF Switzerland. “It magnifies the response.”
But this outbreak is different for another reason, too: This time there is a vaccine.
Beginning Monday, health care workers and other people on the front lines of the outbreak will receive a recombinant Ebola vaccine called rVSV-ZEBOV. After that, people who’ve been in contact with those infected with Ebola, and the contacts of those contacts, will get shots, too. It’s a strategy called ring vaccination, tailored to put the brakes on in-progress outbreaks.