Ebola Cases Now at 13,703

The World Health Organization says the number of reported Ebola cases has surpassed 13,700, a jump of more than 30% since the last numbers were released four days ago.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, assistant director-general of the WHO, said the big increase in cases is likely because of previous under-reporting.

As of today, there have been 13,703 reported cases of Ebola, the organization tweeted, with 13,676 of those in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three most affected countries in this outbreak.

The fatality rate in those countries has remained consistently around 70%, Aylward said.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Aylward said there is some indication that safe burials and education efforts in Liberia are helping bring the numbers down, but he cautioned against assuming that Ebola was coming under control there or in any of the three countries most affected by the disease.

"Getting a slight decrease in the number of cases on a day-to-day basis versus getting this thing closed out is a completely different ballgame," Aylward said, adding that he is "terrified" people will misinterpret the data and think officials are successfully containing the disease.

"That's like saying your pet tiger is under control," he told reporters. "A couple of burials go wrong in a couple of places, and you start a whole set of new transmission chains and the disease starts trending upward again."

He noted some encouraging signs, including the opening of the first community care center in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, a smaller facility designed to isolate and provide basic care to potential Ebola patients. Aylward said he is "cautiously optimistic" about the apparent week-to-week decrease of new Ebola cases in Liberia, and the opening up of available beds there.

According to Aylward, the WHO hopes to increase the capacity of Ebola wards in those three countries from 1,047 currently to 3,100 in a total of 37 facilities by the end of November. Ultimately, Aylward has said, the WHO hopes to step up capacity to 4,700 beds in 56 Ebola treatment centers, but is still seeking foreign medical teams to staff them all.

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http://www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-who-ebola-numbers-20141029-story.html

Albert,these are the kind of increase in numbers that I have been afraid that were coming and they are scarring me.I wonder what next weeks number will be?


Talking about this lady that refused to stay in Quarantine after working with Ebola patients,this is amazing to me. If I would go spend any amount of time treating Ebola patients, I would quarantine myself (if no else would) before I would take a chance on bringing this disease home to my family.What is wrong with this lady? This partly confirms what I have suspected of medical personnal who go to African to treat the poor and  afflicted. I know that when they come back home,They have plenty to say and indicate about themselves being fearless and heroic for going to African and facing the dangers and the challanges of working under bad conditions. But I have not heard to many talk about the people that they were there to help or how much help that these healthcare people gave in treating real, sick ,Africans. I have seen this for years and especially after the latest case, I suspect that most of these healthcare workers who have went to Afica for years,go primarily to make them selves heroes.Not  really to help poor people with no healthcare.

This is a deadly disease,there should be guidelines for quarantine written and the Americans returning from Africa should be put in quarantine according to the rules. Anyone caught trying to escape,should be shot.But when the president appoints an Ebola Czar that is a well known advocate for "Depopulation of the Earth"I suspect that we will see more of this,because if they can get enough infected people in this country,to get Ebola started here,it will help accomplish their goal of killing off 80 % of the population.Treating Ebola patients one or two at a time in a medical center will be far different from treating 10,000 or a 100,000 at one time. I suspect that the quality of care will go down and the death rate will go up.Now they are try to bring Non-American citizens who are infected with Ebola to this country to treat.That will mean more infected American doctors,nurse,lab people and some where along the way,infected mothers,fathers,kids,communities and entire cities.This whole thing is BS. Johnray1 

Attitudes & egos have definitely changed since Brantly & Writebol were brought here.  Even Duncan's family were held in quarantine by armed guard.  What has happened!?  One nurse yells & screams & gets on tv & now all of a sudden a whole government has to back down?

Jen147 wrote: Attitudes & egos have definitely changed since Brantly & Writebol were brought here.  Even Duncan's family were held in quarantine by armed guard.  What has happened!?  One nurse yells & screams & gets on tv & now all of a sudden a whole government has to back down?

Maybe she's a lefty.

~14,000 cases. I'm still going with four times the known reported cases. ~55,000? That's still 7.2 billion by March of 016 at this rate. Theoretically that is.

For links:- the following page has links to .pdf copies of the reports (by date of report).

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/situation-reports/en/

since they reached 5000 cases.. it was already unstoppable. no it really just doesnt matter anymore. up until ca large scale vaccination for this disease will be done (and i know that vaccination subject is pretty tricky since a while now).... the problme will just grow bigger. they do not have the logistics to contain it now. 

Not sure how they predicted this explosion of cases early on.   Let's hope a mutation has not taken with Ebola becoming infectious early on prior to symptoms.  Maybe officials were basing the explosion of projected of cases on an imminent mutation.  Or perhaps we're dealing with two diff strains and the information has not been made available?   We're not seeing just a slight increase here, but a very large increase with exponential growth.  Very large.

Wonder how Nigeria is doing.  Don't ever believe much from them.

pheasant wrote: Didn't they use the pandemic/epidemic simulation for projections Albert? I thought cobber was using it to compare to the model he has been using.

I believe they did, thanks.  It sure seems to be an accurate model.    Very accurate.  We could be looking at the 1 mill cases in January as the CDC  model forecast.  This was based on if they had no effect in slowing it down, which it appears they haven't.   I'll tell ya, the world is going to be in serious trouble with this one.   Stopping it doesn't appear to be possible unless they can continue to confine it in W. Africa and let it burn itself out.  Not sure it's possible. We're facing a very ugly situation.

Wonder if the model factored in a timeline for a possible mutation.

Based on the W. Africa numbers, another imported case or two and we'll go to level 5 and start preparing for a lifestyle change. 

I would like to see (from someone with virology/public health/gov agency experience) a developed country's societal changes/ case numbers breakdown.
How does each increase in numbers effect us? What are the expected gov policy changes per W. Africa increase and threat? What is to be expected with increased imports?

Not looking for wild speculation, but for a logical breakdown based on a North American or European gov/society model.

This is just the first wave

The next update will be 17,000 - 18,000 probably by Monday.