Deadly Ebola-like Virus Can Spread from Person-to-Person, CDC Reveals

A deadly Ebola-like disease can spread from person to person, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned.

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Genetics Lab Processes Coronavirus Tests In Maryland ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND - AUGUST 05: Lab Technician Carter Tavaglione prepares a solution that will be used to process coronavirus test samples at Advagenix, a molecular diagnostics laboratory, on August 05, 2020 in Rockville, Maryland. An advanced genetics testing company, Advagenix has a contract with Montgomery County, Maryland, to test about 1 million people for COVID-19 over the next year. The company is expanding by moving into additional lab space and doubling the size of its workforce to around 30 people to handle the increased work.

On Monday, CDC warned that an Ebola-like virus was found in Bolivia that could transfer from human to human. According to Daily Mail, the virus was known as the Chapare virus, an infection that causes abdominal pain, fever, eye pain, bleeding gums, and skin rashes.

The disease was named in 2003 when a single case was reported in Bolivian province and made the jump from animals through apparent bites of scratched rodents to humans.

However, during a Monday conference, the CDC confirmed that the disease reappeared in 2019 and spread from a patient to four others; three of the five total cases were proven fatal, as per LiveScience.

Similarities with COVID-19

CDC officials say it sounds like COVID-19 deja vu.

The federal agency noted that hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola and Chapare are very rarely to become widespread as they have quickly, often, and obvious symptoms that could turn fatal before they spread.

Besides, most people who died in the 2019 outbreak are not untraceable contacts and random, but health officials who interacted with the infected patient in the course of caring for them. 

There have only six known incidents to-date with the additionally confirmed cases of Chapare virus. Almost after two decades, the virus seemed to disappear following the initial case.

But last year, a hospital near La Paz in Bolivia province, reached out to the CDC investigators, as per Daily Mail. 

Like Ebola, dengue can cause aches and pain in the joints, muscles, behind the eyes, abdominal pain and nausea, and internal bleeding if it progresses to a more severe form

However, when the Bolivian scientists tested samples from the five patients, they came up negative for dengue and a whole panel of other infections found in the region, including yellow and hemorrhagic fever. 

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The hospital didn't have an assay for the Chapare virus, which is only detected once in humans. But the CDC did, and each of five samples has bits of the Chapare virus's genetic material. The changes and similarities in the samples suggest that they transferred from person to person. 

Through their investigation, the CDC scientists suspect that the medical resident who died in the outbreak probably passed the virus to the ambulance medic who gave CPR en route to the hospital that could be the reason for the transmission through body fluids. 

Meanwhile, the late patient's home was found with rodent droppings and also contained the virus, suggesting that the virus jumped from animals to humans. One Chapare survivor still had detectable Ebola-like virus levels in his semen after168 days he caught it. 

The findings seemed to be alarming because the virus can spread from human to human, which we know this mode of transmission allowed the coronavirus to become a pandemic, and it can at least linger in trace amounts for a long time. 

Four out of the six patients who had Chapare died. The virus means that it could exponentially be more fatal than the coronavirus, and it has less of an opportunity to spread. 

The ebola-like disease is a symptomatic condition that symptoms appear almost instantly after being infected, which is the opposite of the COVID-19. An estimated 40% of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, making it described by U.S. infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci as 'nightmare virus.'

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