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W.H.O. Forecast for Ebola Worsens as Disease’s Footprint Widens New Ebola Cases May Soon Reach 10,000 a Week, Health Officials Predict
(about 3 hours later)
The World Health Organization reported sobering new figures Tuesday about the Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa, saying the number of new cases could reach 10,000 per week by December, about 10 times the rate of the past four weeks. UNITED NATIONS — Schools have shut down, elections have been postponed, mining and logging companies have withdrawn, farmers have abandoned their fields. The Ebola virus ravaging West Africa has renewed the risk of political instability in a region barely recovering from civil war, United Nations officials said Tuesday, hours after the World Health Organization reported that new cases could reach 10,000 a week by December — 10 times the current rate.
While the number of deaths so far is roughly half the number of confirmed, probable or suspected cases, the organization also said that the mortality rate is closer to 70 percent. The head of the new Ebola Emergency Response Mission, Anthony Banbury, told the Security Council that none of the three most heavily affected countries — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — is adequately prepared. Only 4,300 treatment beds will be available by Dec. 1, according to current projections, and even those would not have an adequate number of staff members. The acceleration of new cases, if not curbed, could easily overwhelm them.
The updated figures were provided by Dr. Bruce Aylward, the health organization’s assistant director general, during a telephone news conference from its Geneva headquarters. Mr. Banbury painted a picture of substantial need. Only 50 safe-burial teams are on the ground, he said, but 500 are required. They need protective gear and about a thousand vehicles. So far, Mr. Banbury said, the mission has delivered 69 vehicles.
He said that as of Tuesday, the total number of confirmed, probable or suspected Ebola cases over the course of the epidemic had reached 8,914, with 4,447 deaths. The vast majority are in the three most afflicted countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. “We are fighting for people who are alive and healthy today, but will become infected by Ebola and die if we do not put in place the necessary emergency response,” he said, speaking by a video communication link from Accra, Ghana, where the mission was established in late September.
Just on Friday, the organization said that the deaths totaled 4,024 — indicating that hundreds more people have died in a matter of days. He went on to say that there is a small window of time before the outbreak expands to levels where it cannot be controlled. “We either stop Ebola now,” he said, “or we face an entirely unprecedented situation for which we do not have a plan.”
Dr. Aylward, an infectious diseases specialist who just completed a visit to West Africa, said the survival rate was now “30 percent at most in these countries, ” even as the international campaign to fight it has escalated. Mr. Banbury’s remarks to the Security Council came as a United Nations aid worker died at a hospital in Germany. The victim, identified as a 56-year-old Sudanese laboratory technician at the United Nations mission in Liberia, had been responsible for the disposal of medical waste. He fell ill on Oct. 6.
The epidemic has continued to expand geographically and now affects more areas in the three countries than a month ago, including close to Guinea’s border with Ivory Coast, Dr. Aylward said, and the number of infections was still rising in the capitals of the three worst-hit countries. The Security Council in September passed a resolution that declared Ebola a threat to international peace and security. On Tuesday, it heard sobering alarms about Ebola’s widening impact on the region.
He described Ebola as “a high-mortality disease in any circumstance but especially in these countries.” Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, the assistant secretary general for political affairs, said the security situation had already been “significantly impacted since the outbreak of the disease,” with fatal attacks on health workers in Guinea, local riots fueled by what he called mistrust and misinformation about Ebola, and threats of strikes by health workers in Liberia and gravediggers in Sierra Leone.
Dr. Aylward said the health organization was particularly focused on isolating 70 percent of new patients in the next two months — to remove them from situations in which they can pass the disease to others and begin reversing the tide of the Ebola virus. The Liberian ambassador to the United Nations, Marjon V. Kamara, said that her country’s economy urgently needed restoration and that her compatriots needed to get back to work. “The more they remain idle, the more the prospects for trouble,” she said.
While Dr. Aylward acknowledged the recent surge in international pledges to combat Ebola’s spread, he said that without a further escalation in help over the next 60 days, “a lot more people will die.” Liberia’s troubles went on for a generation, with a succession of civil wars that finally ended in 2004. Since then, the United Nations has spent more than $8 billion on peacekeeping operations, according to an analysis by the Center for International Cooperation at New York University.
He also expressed concern about coordination among the many medical and charitable groups that are now helping in West Africa. Hervé Ladsous, the under secretary general for peacekeeping, told the Council that 39 peacekeepers in Liberia were currently “under quarantine or are being closely watched for possible exposure.”
“There’s a lot of actors on the ground, and an awful lot of them are working with Ebola for the first time,” he said. “The challenge right now is making sure all of that adds up to the kind of plan to stop this disease.” Earlier in Geneva, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general, Dr. Bruce Aylward, told a news conference that the number of new cases could reach 10,000 a week in less than two months, compared with about 1,000 a week during the past four weeks. He also said that as of Tuesday, the total number of confirmed, probable or suspected Ebola cases over the course of the epidemic had reached 8,914, with 4,447 deaths.
In another cautionary note, Dr. Aylward warned that the ramped-up response could invite complacency and false hope, and that recent signs that Ebola was easing in some areas were misleading. While the number of deaths in the most afflicted countries so far is roughly half the number of confirmed, probable or suspected cases, Dr. Aylward, an infectious diseases specialist, said the survival rate was now “30 percent at most in these countries.”
“Any sense that the great effort that’s been kicked off in the last couple of months is already starting to see an impact — that would be really, really premature,” he said. Dr. Aylward said the health organization was particularly focused on isolating 70 percent of new patients in the next two months and beginning to reverse the tide of the virus.
While the United States, Canada and Britain have taken emergency steps to screen international passengers to limit the risk of importing Ebola, most of Europe is still struggling with that issue.
In a sign of growing concern about the lack of a plan, the European Union’s health commissioner, Tonio Borg, urged member governments to agree swiftly on a common set of measures.
Such measures, Mr. Borg said in a letter to fellow ministers, “will only be truly effective if applied by concerned member states in a coordinated manner.”