Situation Report

by Shalini Saxena - Nov 30 2014 - http://arstechnica.com

We know what antibodies stop it in its tracks—we now know where they attach.

The latest Ebola outbreak has dwarfed any that have occurred since the discovery of the virus in 1976; previous outbreaks have had lethality rates of up to 90 percent. Yet no vaccines or therapies are currently approved for human use, which limits our ability to treat patients and contain the outbreak. Mixtures of monoclonal antibodies (see sidebar) are a potential treatment option that has been used experimentally.

by Elizabeth Barber - Dec. 1, 2014 - time.com

The U.N. mission is urging that the longer the disease is allowed to storm West Africa, the more likely it is that the virus will reappear elsewhere in the world.

The head of the U.N. Ebola mission in West Africa has said there is a “huge risk” of the Ebola outbreak expanding beyond the hard-hit region.

https://time.com/3611314/u-n-ebola-global-threat-anthony-banbury-bbc/

With trials under way, scientists are working out how to give vaccines in affected regions

NATURE   By Ewan Callaway                                                                                                 Dec. 2, 2014

Safety trials of Ebola vaccines are starting to return results: at least one is known to be safe and to summon an immune response against the virus.

The challenge now is to use the results to guide the larger studies that will reveal whether the vaccines work.

“The immune responses are there,” says infectious-disease researcher Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute in Oxford, UK. “The tough call is whether they’re enough to protect humans against Ebola.”

Read complete story

http://www.nature.com/news/positive-results-spur-race-for-ebola-vaccine-1.16468

WASHINGTON POST-- By Lena H. Sun                                                                                         Dec. 2, 2014

WASHINGTON --U.S. officials have designated 35 hospitals around the country to care for Ebola patients, part of the Obama administration’s effort in the past two months to improve domestic preparedness to cope with the deadly virus that has ravaged West Africa.

A nurse walks down a hallway alongside a patient care room in a new custom-built bio-containment unit for potential Ebola cases at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York. (John Minchillo/AP)

 The hospitals were chosen by state health officials and hospital executives and assessed by infection control teams from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make sure they have adequate staff, equipment, training and resources “to provide the extensive treatment necessary to care for an Ebola patient,” according to a senior administration official.