Brazilian local health authorities have officially announced that two people who were once under monitoring as suspected Ebola cases have now cleared their tests, with both returning negative results for the deadly virus.
The two suspected patients, who developed Ebola-compatible symptoms after returning from trip to African nations, were placed under observation and testing in Brazil’s two largest urban centers, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, immediately after they showed symptoms. According to an official announcement from São Paulo’s health department, the 37-year-old male patient, who had traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – the epicenter of the ongoing Ebola outbreak – did not contract Ebola. Subsequent tests revealed he was actually infected with meningitis, and had only presented fever, a common overlapping symptom for both diseases.
In the separate case in Rio de Janeiro, the patient – a Belgian national who recently returned from Uganda – also tested negative for Ebola. He had been flagged for suspicion after showing viral symptoms including cough, body chills and diarrhea, but test results confirmed he was suffering from malaria instead.
Health officials noted that if either of these two cases had returned positive Ebola results, they would have marked the first confirmed Ebola infections detected outside of Africa since the current outbreak took hold in the DRC.
As of current reports, the outbreak situation in Africa remains serious. The DRC has recorded more than 1,000 suspected Ebola cases, with at least 246 confirmed deaths linked to the virus. Most infections are concentrated in three eastern provinces of the country: Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu. Neighboring Uganda has also confirmed nine Ebola cases and one fatality from the disease.
The ongoing outbreak is driven by the Bundibugyo strain, a rare Ebola variant for which no licensed, proven effective vaccine currently exists. This strain has an average mortality rate of roughly 30 percent among those who contract it. At present, three new candidate vaccines targeting the Bundibugyo strain are under active development, led by research teams including the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the University of Oxford, and biopharmaceutical company Moderna.
For background, Ebola viruses are primarily zoonotic pathogens that naturally circulate in wild animal populations, most commonly fruit bats. Human outbreaks typically originate when an individual comes into contact with or consumes an infected animal. Once an initial human infection occurs, the virus spreads rapidly through direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids – which includes sweat, saliva, blood, semen, feces, urine and vomit.