After a ten-day incubation period, no one from the immediate vaccination group developed Ebola, according to the report, while 16 people from the delayed vaccination group did develop the virus. “Having seen the devastating effects of Ebola on communities and even whole countries with my own eyes, I am very encouraged by today’s news”, said Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Børge Brende, who spearheaded a million global funding pledge to fight Ebola. “It will change the management of the current Ebola outbreak and future outbreaks”.
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Scientists believe the vaccine is most effective at the onset of an outbreak and plan to expand the vaccination to minors age 13 and older.
The blueprint is expected to be presented to the WHO’s annual conference of health ministers, the World Health Assembly, in 2016, Kieny said. “The credit goes to the Guinean government, the people living in the communities and our partners in this project”.
WHO director general Margaret Chan said Friday that the preliminary results are promising; if confirmed, she said, it “is going to be a game-changer”.
MRK shares were up slightly as of Friday afternoon.
There have been more than 11,000 reported deaths in the three worst-affected countries – Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia – since the epidemic took hold a year ago.
“This is the lowest weekly total for over a year, and comes after 8 consecutive weeks during which case incidence had plateaued at between 20 and 30 cases per week”, the WHO said. The immune systems of recipients make antibodies that prime for defence against the real virus.
It’s called a “ring trial”, in which a safe circle is formed around infected people.
So, Henderson said, researchers settled on a study design in which everyone who had contact with an Ebola patient would get the still-unproven vaccine candidate eventually – but some people, chosen randomly, would not get it for 21 days.
This new vaccine has been tested on thousands of people and seems to be quite effective. Namely, after administering the vaccine to 4,000 people who were in close contact with Ebola patients, the treatment provided 100 percent protection.
Only the immediately vaccinated people were 100 per cent Ebola-free.
The vaccine, VSV-EBOV, was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and is licensed to Merck.
All 33 contacts in Liberia who have been followed up since the latest infections there are two days from completing the 21-day period to be declared free of the disease.
That way one vaccine could be stockpiled and used to control all Ebola outbreaks. “Another minor concern is that pregnant women, who are a high-risk group, and children were not vaccinated due to uncertainty of how the vaccine might affect them”.
“In parallel with the ring vaccination we are also conducting a trial of the same vaccine on frontline workers”, Bertrand Draguez, medical director at Doctors Without Borders, said in the news release. “The epidemic is not over, and this shows we have another potential weapon”.
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“The initial results of the study show that the vaccine can effectively contain the further spread of the Ebola virus”, said the University of Bern, which contributed to the research.
