LOS ANGELES, Nov 16: Ebola virus does not uniformly cause severe disease and people may be infected without showing signs of illness, new research has found.
Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine in the US and other institutions identified 14 individuals previously unknown to have had the disease in a Sierra Leone village that was an Ebola hot spot.
They were found to be carrying antibodies to Ebola, suggesting they had been infected at some point, though they had not been included in the original count.
Twelve of them said they had had no symptoms of the disease, which typically causes fever, unexplained bleeding, headache, muscle pain, rash, vomiting, diarrhoea, breathing problems and difficulty swallowing.
The findings also suggest that the epidemic was more widespread than previously believed. Based on the results of the study, the researchers calculated the prevalence of minimally symptomatic infection to be 25 per cent.
“The study corroborates previous evidence that Ebola is like most other viruses in that it causes a spectrum of manifestations, including minimally symptomatic infection,” said Gene Richardson from Stanford.
“It provides important evidence on that front. It also means a significant portion of transmission events may have gone undetected during the outbreak. This shows there was a lot more human-to-human transmission than we thought,” he said.
The research was done in the rural village of Sukudu in Sierra Leone in West Africa, with about 900 residents. There were 34 reported cases of Ebola in the village, including 28 deaths, between November 2014 and February 2015.
More than 28,000 cases of Ebola infection were reported in Africa during the epidemic, the largest and longest in history. More than 11,000 people are estimated to have died because of the disease.
In the aftermath, Richardson and his colleagues decided to go back to the village to try to determine whether the Ebola infection could be minimally symptomatic, as previous studies have suggested.
He worked with a local physician and two community health workers in gathering data for the study.
They used a test known as the ELISA assay, a technique that can detect the presence of an antibody. They first made sure the test was accurate by comparing results from 30 Ebola survivors in Sukudu with those of 132 people in other villages where the virus had not been reported.
Richardson said the test proved to be a reasonable measure of viral antibodies.
The researchers then recruited 187 men, women and children from Sukudu who had likely been exposed to Ebola, either because they were living in the same household or had shared a public toilet with a person confirmed to have had the disease.
The study was published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. (AGENCIES)
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NOTES-MUMBAI
Day 8: No respite for customers in
queues at banks & ATMs
MUMBAI, Nov 16:
Several ATMs across the city left the people wanting to withdraw money disappointed, even as customers lined up outside banks to exchange and deposit money since early morning.
However, the indelible ink, as decided yesterday, was not used to mark the customers at banks and post offices, which they apparently did not receive.
Grappling with unending queues and frayed tempers in banks and to check operation of syndicates, the Centre had yesterday decided to introduce a system of marking customers exchanging the defunct currency notes with indelible ink while monitoring suspicious deposits in Jan Dhan accounts.
Preetam More from Kannamwar Nagar of suburban Vikhroli said, “I came to stand in the queue at 6.30 in the morning and deposited the money at around 9.30 am. I was expecting to get the ink mark, as I heard in news yesterday, but there was no such move”.
Another anxious resident from suburban Malad, Ritesh Bhaumik said, “Almost 90 per cent ATMs are not working here, but thank God I got some money exchanged from a bank by being in queue for one hour”.
A frequent overseas traveller, Rajiv Singh found himself in a fix when he landed at the Mumbai airport today and with only Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes.
“I was not aware of this development (of demonetisation). When I approached a cab driver, he instantly asked whether I have small denomination money or not. When I replied in negative, he refused to take me in the taxi. I then called up my friend in Santacruz. I don’t know how he managed, but he came with some money that helped me to reach Rabale,” he said.
Chembur resident Roshan Tara has also been facing inconvenience since the government’s demonetisation move last week.
“My husband works in Saudi Arabia and while going to work there, he gave me some cash in Rs 500/1,000 notes to meet the daily expenses on November 2. I have three small children. I am unable to stand for long hours in queue. I don’t know what to do,” she said.
Shaukat Ali, a father of two school-going children, also voiced his woes.
“My children’s school is neither accepting old notes nor cheques. This is very upsetting. Government must give some directives to school managements also,” he said.
Meanwhile, in some relief to patients, the civic-run King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEM) in Parel here has set up two currency exchange counters in its premises.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in a statement said the KEM Hospital tied-up with Punjab National Bank and India Post to set up currency exchange counters that are being used by customers by showing case papers. (AGENCIES)
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NOTES-POSTOFFICE
Rural post offices lacking counterfeit
detection machines
BHUBANESWAR, Nov 16:
Rural post offices of Odisha, the lifeline of the rural economy in the state, witnessed chaotic scenes due to absence of machines to detect counterfeit notes, making it difficult to exchange demonetised currency notes.
Serpentine queues, rush and chaos were witnessed in rural post offices in districts like Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur as over 700 branch offices and sub-post offices lacked the infrastructure and manpower to tackle the emergent situation.
People who rushed to withdraw or deposit the demonetised cash were turned away. Those who had dropped in to exchange the demonetised cash also failed to do so. People’s anger and despair was palpable in several places.
“This is my money. I sweated it out in farmland to earn it. But post office did not accept high-denomination notes by stating that it has already received cash beyond its reserve.
We people who toil to earn it are being harassed,” a local in Bedari village of Kendrapara district said.
No rural post office branch here is equipped with counterfeit note detection machine and ultraviolet tool to detect genuine notes from counterfeit ones. That has compounded the plight of rural post office staff who are not ready to put their job at stake.
“Manually detecting the fake notes is an uphill task as there is heavy rush at counters. There is every possibility of counterfeit notes sneaking into our chest. That’s why, we are forced to turn away people on some pretext or the other,” said a village post master, requesting not to be named. (AGENCIES)
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