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The Ebola virus may cause latent infections in survivors that could spark new outbreaks. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/National Institutes of Health/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
New Ebola outbreak likely sparked by a person infected 5 years ago
Mar. 12, 2021 , 1:15 PM
An Ebola outbreak in Guinea that has so far sickened at least 18 people and killed nine has stirred difficult memories of the devastating epidemic that struck the West African country between 2013 and 2016, along with neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, leaving more than 11,000 people dead.
But it may not just be the trauma that has persisted. The virus causing the new outbreak barely differs from the strain seen 5 to 6 years ago, genomic analyses by three independent research groups have shown, suggesting the virus lay dormant in a survivor of the epidemic all that time. “This is pretty shocking,” says virologist Angela Rasmussen of Georgetown University. “Ebolaviruses aren�