Checkout Budget Highlights 2023The World Health Organisation (WHO) this week confirmed an epidemic outbreak of Marburg virus in Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa, a first for the tiny nation.
The WHO said that at least 16 cases have been detected, characterised by haemorrhagic fever, in the ongoing epidemic while nine deaths have been confirmed. For a world still reeling from the aftereffects of a massive Covid-19 pandemic, the latest outbreak has brought fresh worries of a possible global outbreak.
But are these concerns justified? MC explains:
What is Marburg virus?
Like Ebola, the Marburg virus also originates in bats and spreads to people through close contact with the bodily fluids of infected people or surfaces such as contaminated bedsheets.
The US Centers for Disease Control says that it is a highly infectious viral haemorrhagic fever that is spawned by the animal-borne RNA virus of the same Filoviridae family as the Ebola virus.
The infection causes an illness like Ebola, with fever, headache and severe malaise, followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, and aches and pains. Bleeding follows about five days later and it can be fatal for 90 per cent of the infected people.
As of now, there are no approved treatments for the infection, which is closely related to the Ebola virus, but vaccines are in development now.
Where is the virus circulating?
In 1967, a number of patients in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany, and in Belgrade (then Yugoslavia, now Serbia), started showing symptoms of an infectious disease — a high fever, chills, muscle aches and vomiting. The condition of the patients worsened over the next few days until they began bleeding from every orifice in their bodies, including needle puncture wounds. Overall, 31 people died.
The cause of this mysterious disease was established three months later when virologists in Marburg discovered the first filovirus, a cousin of the equally deadly Ebola virus. The virus was carried by infected African green monkeys from Uganda.
After this first confirmed outbreak, the virus was then mostly seen in African countries, in bat-infested caves or mines. However, there have also been outbreaks in Europe and the US.
Can it trigger a pandemic threat?
As the Marburg virus can spread from human to human through contact with bodily fluids, much like Ebola — it is now seen as a highly transmissible disease. Outbreaks in Europe and the US have shown in the past that due to increasing globalisation and international travel, the risk for global spread is high, especially when the incubation period could be up to three weeks. This could be disastrous given its high death rate.
Should India be concerned?
Virologist Dr Shahid Jameel, who is associated with the University of Oxford, told Moneycontrol that Marburg is largely restricted to equatorial Africa and though nothing is impossible in today’s world with its travel networks and climate change effects, the chances of a Marburg outbreak in India are minimal.
“What India needs to keep an eye on is a resurgent Nipah virus in Bangladesh,” he said.
Another virologist associated with the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, who did not want to be identified, also stressed that as of now India need not be on high alert since the disease is with high mortality and is unlikely to spread fast and far.
“I think we should be more worried about the HPAI- H5N1 (a bird flu virus that has also been detected in some humans) spreading fast across the world,” said the scientist, pointing out that in many countries, it has decimated the poultry industry.