The Ebola outbreak in West Africa could spread to hundreds of thousands more people by the end of January, according to an estimate under development by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that puts one worst-case scenario at 550,000 or more infections.
The report, scheduled to be released next week, was described by two people familiar with its contents who asked to remain anonymous because it isn’t yet public.
The projection, which vastly outstrips previous estimates, is under review by researchers and may change. It assumes no additional aid or intervention by governments and relief agencies, which are mobilizing to contain the Ebola outbreak before it spirals further out of control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Here’s a link to a really interesting site put together by researchers at Columbia University showing various projections for Ebola, by country and combined
http://cpid.iri.columbia.edu/ebola.html
You can see best case (improved); “no change”; worst case (degraded) scenarios for infections & mortality through early November. You can slide the history timeline to see how the shape of the curve has changed over time, i.e. what the best / worst case scenarios looked like in early August versus what they look like now.
Deeply troubling…
Thanks for that link, Karen B. Troubling indeed.