Ebola Vaccine Proven 100% Effective in African Trial

Ebola, that virus you used to see flooding every mainstream TV broadcast for years, warning us to be watchers in these End Days, has carried on in Africa, despite its low tide on the American side. But recently, an unorthodox clinical trial in Guinea proved a particular ebola vaccine effective in protecting the masses from this mortal virus.

A CURE FOR THE EBOLA VIRUS?

No, not a cure, but a vaccine was just revealed through The Lancet, which showed the injection guaranteed 100% protection after only 10-days post-injection. Manufactured by Merck, the vaccine is believed to be the answer to this 18-month long epidemic in West Africa.

“This will go down in history as one of those hallmark public health efforts,” announced Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. He wasn’t directly involved in the study, but, claiming kinship, he continues; “[w]e will teach about this in public health schools.”

“It’s a wonderful result and a fantastic illustration of how vaccines can be developed very quickly and can be used in an outbreak situation to control the disease,” added Adrian Hill, a vaccine researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom (also speaking from a sense of kinship).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF EBOLA VACCINE

This new Ebola vaccine was originally developed by researchers present at the Public Health Agency of Canada, and contains the Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV), which can infect only livestock, with the ebola surface protein stitched into its structure. This is one of two vaccines presently undergoing tests in countries rife with Ebola. Another vaccine is manufactured by the company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The study mentioned above was carried out by Ana Maria Henao-Restrepo of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, along with colleagues at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, the Guinean Ministry of Health, et al.

WHEN DID THIS EBOLA VACCINE TRIAL BEGIN?

The word was given to start the trial last October, but this didn’t transform into action until just this past March. However, by this time Ebola cases were at a low-tide, and what dire cases there still were were scattered across a large ambiguous area of Guinea. So to show that the new vaccines could prove effective in a standard randomized trial, the researchers needed to enroll more patients than was logistically likely.

UNORTHODOX EMPIRICISM

So what the researchers did to cop the situ was to design their vaccination dispersal system around what’s known as ring vaccination, according to which only patients who’ve recently contracted Ebola, in addition to their virus sires (if you will), were vaccinated. These abstract rings, or clusters, were totally randomized. For 48 people, the ebola vaccine was administered immediately following the first Ebola detection in their local community. In 42 others, vaccination teams returned three whole weeks later. Then the researchers performed a count, taking note of how many new Ebola cases existed in each ring. Since they were still unsure how long the ebola vaccine would need to take effect, the researchers only included cases occurring ten or more days post-vaccination for primary analysis. No cases existed amidst the 2014 population (the ones immediately vaccinated), but 16 of 2,380 who received the shot three weeks later tested positive. This means that, per the bounds of this study, the vaccine tested 100% effective.

SCIENTIFIC REACTIONS

“It surprised me how quickly you can intervene with a vaccination and have an effect,” exclaimed Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust research charity, which co-funded the study. “It’s possible to do that sort of complex work in very, very complex environments–ethically, socially, culturally and scientifically. You can do it. That is a revelation for many people.”

The success of this ebola vaccine was so unexpected and welcome and total that the trial’s data and safety monitoring board (wholly autonomous; unbiased by fiat), immediately recommended to cease the vaccine’s current implementation, and move it on to widespread dispersal, in order to vaccinate all clusters post haste, sans any hesitation or bureaucratic stalling. The research team has gladly obliged.

Last week, WHO reported just seven new Ebola cases: four in Guinea, three in Sierra Leone. This is the lowest in more than a year. Although celebrations and mayhaps a few tears are in order, WHO has warned us not to relent until the disease is well in hand, again.


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