UGANDA – The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced, during the G20 meeting in Indonesia, that three trial vaccines for Ebola will arrive in Uganda in the coming week.
“I’m pleased to announce that the WHO committee of external experts, has evaluated three candidate vaccines and agreed that all three should be included in the plan trial in Uganda,” announced Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.
“WHO and Uganda’s minister of health have conceded and accepted the committee’s recommendation. We expect that first dose of vaccines to be shipped to Uganda next week.”
An Ebola outbreak in Uganda was declared in late September. Since then, Ebola has claimed at least 55 deaths.
The two licensed Ebola vaccines — made by Merck and Janssen, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine division — protect against the Zaire species of ebolavirus but are ineffective against the Sudan species circulating in this outbreak.
Several laboratories have developed Ebola Sudan vaccines over the last two decades, but this type of Ebola occurs infrequently — the last outbreak was in 2012 — leaving no opportunities to test vaccines until now.
“We hope – I dearly hope – that this epidemic goes away. And this epidemic is controllable without vaccines, it’s clear that we can get a containment without vaccines,” said Michael Ryan, WHO health emergencies director.
“But it’s also clear from the Congo experience that you can get to control much quicker using effective vaccines and that’s there the answers we need to get.”
Two of the three trial vaccines were developed in the UK, the third trial vaccine comes from the US.
This comes as the raising of the threat level of Ebola by the World Health Organization (WHO) has neighbors on edge amid growing questions over lockdowns and the broader response.
Infections in Uganda have continued to rise more than a month after an Ebola outbreak was declared, and the World Health Organization has raised its Ebola risk assessment for both the country and the wider region since the virus reached the capital, Kampala.
Rather than Uganda having contained the virus, the WHO stated in a 28 October update that “the risk can be assessed to be very high at the national level, and high at the regional level,” a step up in threat level from previous assessments. It went on to describe global risk as low.
According to Uganda’s Ministry of Health, there were 130 confirmed Ebola cases and 43 deaths as of October 31, for a 33% case fatality rate.
The lack of a licensed vaccine for the “Sudan” strain present in Uganda, as well as the spread of the outbreak to Kampala, have exacerbated the public health risks, WHO warned.
Since the outbreak was declared on September 20, the highly contagious virus has spread to six rural districts in the country’s center – Mubende, Kassanda, Kagadi, Bunyangabu, Kyegegwa, and Wakiso – as well as Kampala, a 3.6 million-person city in the south.
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