New vaccine proves to be effective in Ebola trial

As of right now, around 28,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Libera have been infected with Ebola, and more than 11,000 have died.

Added Peter Smith of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the results were “very exciting and suggest that the Ebola vaccine tested may be highly effective in protecting against Ebola disease among those in the immediate vicinity of an Ebola case”.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said Friday that preliminary results are promising; if confirmed, she said, it “is going to be a game-changer”. “It will change the management of the current Ebola outbreak and future outbreaks”. The other group, consisting of 3,500 people, were administered the drug after 10 days delay of coming in contact with the virus.

Researchers carried out a trial for which they tested 4,000 people and the results have been called “remarkable” by medical experts. This shows that for the people who received the vaccination immediately, the vaccine was 100 percent effective, according to the study, published today (July 31) in the journal The Lancet. This entails that the first people to be vaccinated are those that have been in close contact with a person infected by Ebola.

The organisation’s Tom Ellman said efforts to stop the disease must not be relaxed and health care workers treating the virus should be prioritised. “With such high efficacy, all affected countries should immediately start and multiply ring vaccinations to break chains of transmission and vaccinate all frontline workers to protect them”. If the vaccine is effective, then we are already protecting them from the virus.

In the 2,014 close contacts who were vaccinated immediately there were no subsequent cases of Ebola.

Scientists have finally developed a vaccine that can protect patients against the deadly Ebola virus.

An Ebola virus vaccine trial has produced successful results and a breakthrough in the battle against major infectious diseases.

A new, yet experimental vaccine tested in Guinea on several subjects could be the key to ending the ongoing Ebola epidemic in West Africa. According to media reports a German medical student now in Ruanda is showing signs of the disease, though should he in fact have Ebola it is so far unclear whether he would be flown to Germany for treatment.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck and NewLink Genetics, a biotech firm based in Ames, Iowa, are developing the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine commercially. “This (vaccine) could be the key that we’ve been missing to end the outbreak”, said University of Reading virologist Ben Neuman, who was not involved in the study.

Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, one of the funders of the trial, said: “This partnership also shows that such critical work is possible in the midst of a bad epidemic”.