The International, national and community willingness is there an... by Bruce Aylward

The International, national and community willingness is there and the investments are there.

Bruce Aylward

Image Embed Code

Categorized in : World

The big push really is around surveillance and laboratory diagnostics capacity so that if people start turning yellow and dying, you get diagnostics rapidly and vaccination.

Since the public health emergency of international concern was declared (by WHO) back in February, the evidence that there may be a causal relationship has continued to accumulate.

These results come at a critically important time, reminding us that while Ebola case numbers continue to plummet, Ebola survivors and their families continue to struggle with the effects of the disease, this study provides further evidence that survivors need continued, substantial support for the next six to 12 months to meet these challenges and to ensure their partners are not exposed to potential virus.

It's not the sex that is dangerous, it's the semen that is dangerous, how people actually get exposed, in soiled linens or whatever, is not clear.

This virus and this outbreak in particular has a nasty sting in the tail, it's not finished, by a long shot.

As soon as they develop fever and become sick, if you get them into isolation they will not initiate another chain of transmission, this is part of the end-game of Ebola, it is trying to monitor those contacts.

The virus has told us this week loud and clear I'm not going to go away the way you are expecting me to based on these (epidemiological) curves. And all I have to do is survive out the next couple of weeks or months until the rains hit, and then you're going to have a very, very difficult situation.

Right now though, our funding for those 800 people out there in the field, it ends at the end of February. That is how precarious the situation is right now in terms of being able to sustain this.

We run out of cash in mid-February, that is four or five months before that virus is going to stop in a best case scenario.

We run out of cash in mid-February, that is four or five months before that virus is going to stop in a best-case scenario, so it is a bit of a race against time right now.

You don't have control of Ebola until you know where all your transmission chains are and until your cases are coming from known contact lists, you always hear about disease detective work and that is what Ebola is about now.

In Monrovia you had bodies on the streets, you had a riot, you had someone shot - awareness went through the roof in a very, very short time as a result, you don’t want to see that kind of thing drive public awareness but it has an impact very, very fast. People changed behaviors in Monrovia - bang! Like that.

Every new place that gets infected goes through that same terrible learning curve where a lot of people have to die ... before those behaviors start to change.

That’s when the contact tracing... took a jump from around 60-70... by Bruce Aylward

That’s when the contact tracing... took a jump from around 60-70 percent completion to 98 percent.

What’s becoming interesting now, only in the last couple of months, is the divergence between cases and deaths as a result of vaccination coverage, we are learning that the single best indicator of mortality risk is the level of whole coverage, not just COVAX coverage.

How can we have this commitment from the most powerful countries in the world, the producing countries in the world, the high-coverage countries of the world, the manufacturers of the world, and then we have to downgrade the forecast ? So at this point, we have to try and pull out every single stop to try and manage the situation.

Should there be a moratorium on boosters ? Absolutely. Should there be a moratorium on vaccinating people at low risk of severe disease or death ? Absolutely, our role is to make sure that we put forward the strongest possible arguments and way out of this pandemic, and the way out of that is a moratorium, and it's extended because since the last time we called for it, the equity gap's gotten greater, the amount of vaccine available to low income countries has gone down.

We cannot do that on our own.

We're going into a high season for transmission of respiratory illnesses and hence our concern that we have all possible capacities optimized to be able to manage that, and part of this is going to be managing flu and managing, ensuring optimal flu vaccination.

That highlights the reason it's so important to get the flu vaccination rates up this year, even relative to previous years, we need that capacity potentially to manage Covid.