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Fewer Ebola Cases Go Unreported Than Thought, Study Finds

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NEW YORK TIMES    by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.                                                                 Dec. 16, 2014

Transmission of the Ebola virus occurs mostly within families, in hospitals and at funerals, not randomly like the flu, Yale scientists said Tuesday, and far fewer cases go unreported than has previously been estimated.

That implies, they said, that the epidemic is unlikely to reach the gloomy scenarios of hundreds of thousands of cases that studies released in September had forecast were possible; the most pessimistic one, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had predicted up to 1.4 million cases by late January....

The new study, led by epidemiologists from the Yale School of Public Health, was published online by the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Scientists from Texas, Brazil and the Liberian Health Ministry contributed to the research.

The researchers said they had too little data to predict how many West Africans could eventually be infected, but enough to show that the dire predictions were inaccurate.

In a brief written response, the C.D.C. said that its September projection was “a first attempt to better understand to what extent underreporting was occurring in West Africa.” The new study, the agency said, “further refines our understanding, and C.D.C. applauds the method.”

Read complete story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/science/fewer-ebola-cases-go-unreported-than-thought-study-finds-.html?ref=world&_r=0

Link to study in journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases:

http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/12/12/cid.ciu1131.abstract?sid=65d1b553-4d7d-4f16-a4e5-0017b37d92ce

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