The Ebola epidemic in West Africa is entering a critical and complicated new phase, one that global health officials refer to simply as “getting to zero.” Even as cases continue to plummet, reaching that elusive goal means marshaling more resources than ever to stamp out the virus.
The central challenge remains quickly isolating every Ebola victim, painstakingly tracing all the people who might have been exposed and monitoring them for several weeks to be sure they don’t get sick, a process that experts say could take several months, if not longer. Only then will the thousands of viral transmission chains vanish one by one.
“The last case is the hardest case,” said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We won’t get to zero simply by hoping things are going down but by intensively following up on every single possible case. We’ve got to find where the cases came from, trace them back and identify the rivulet of the flood and stanch it.”
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(Washington Post) The new Ebola target number: Zero cases
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa is entering a critical and complicated new phase, one that global health officials refer to simply as “getting to zero.” Even as cases continue to plummet, reaching that elusive goal means marshaling more resources than ever to stamp out the virus.
The central challenge remains quickly isolating every Ebola victim, painstakingly tracing all the people who might have been exposed and monitoring them for several weeks to be sure they don’t get sick, a process that experts say could take several months, if not longer. Only then will the thousands of viral transmission chains vanish one by one.
“The last case is the hardest case,” said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We won’t get to zero simply by hoping things are going down but by intensively following up on every single possible case. We’ve got to find where the cases came from, trace them back and identify the rivulet of the flood and stanch it.”
Read it all.