Uganda races to contain a deadly Ebola outbreak

An outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, caused by a strain for which there is no approved vaccine or drug treatment, is fanning fears across East Africa, as authorities race to contain the virus that has already caused 35 confirmed infections and seven deaths.

Scientists and health officials are now pushing to start clinical trials for two experimental vaccines to protect against this strain, which originated in Sudan in 1976. Even though there are relatively new and powerful Ebola vaccines, they do not protect against the Sudan strain — complicating efforts to quickly stamp out the disease before it overburdens the nation’s fragile health care system.

In central Uganda, where the cases were reported, at least six medical workers have contracted the virus, leading some of their peers to request transfer elsewhere. Parents, concerned their children will catch the highly contagious virus, are withdrawing them from schools. And in a nation that has faced multiple Ebola outbreaks since it reported its first case in 2000, worries persist that another fast-spreading virus could precipitate restrictions that would devastate an economy still reeling from coronavirus shutdowns.

“The whole situation gives me a lot of worry,” Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, the World Health Organization’s representative to Uganda, said in a phone interview.

With the virus spreading to a fourth district Friday and affecting an area covering a radius of more than 75 miles, “we are at a disadvantage,” he said.

Ebola is a highly contagious disease transmitted through contact with sick or dead people or animals, causing fever, fatigue, diarrhea, and internal and external bleeding. The 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa was the deadliest Ebola epidemic, killing more than 11,300 people, followed by the 2018 outbreak in Congo that killed 2,280 people.

So far, Ugandan officials have ruled out issuing stay-at-home orders or curfews, or restricting movement in schools, markets or houses of worship.

“There is no need for anxiety, panic, restriction of movements or unnecessary closure of public places,” President Yoweri Museveni said after a televised speech this past week. Museveni, who introduced stringent lockdowns during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic two years ago, said his nation had the ability to bring the Ebola virus to heel.

Uganda is also working with neighboring countries, including Rwanda and Kenya, to step up vigilance at land borders and at airports.