Disease

Ebola - Update

The Ebola virus is killing 70% of the people who contract the disease, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, and as many as 10,000 new cases a week could be reported by early December.

Bruce Aylward, the WHO assistant director-general in charge of the organization’s response to the epidemic, said the Ebola virus is “still moving geographically, still escalating” in some bigger cities.

He expressed concern the disease could spread to West African countries that share borders with Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the epicenters of the current outbreak, singling out Ivory Coast as particularly vulnerable.

The WHO’s latest numbers indicated 8,914 suspected or confirmed Ebola cases and 4,447 deaths from the disease. Based on those numbers, the mortality rate is under 50%.

But Dr. Aylward said that when patients can be monitored throughout the course of their disease, the mortality rate is actually 70% in the affected countries.