Jeff Reutter of the Ohio Sea Grant, gave a nice talk this week on the causes of Lake Erie’s Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), including last weekend’s incident that affected Toledo’s water supply. He’s been focused on this and other issues for four decades and gives great talks.
Note: The following post is current as of WHO report of 09-18-14, which includes data to 09-14-14. [I’ve altered this code a number of times because of the nearly constantly changing format and location of the WHO data.]
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I wanted to find certain statistics for the West African Ebolavirus (EBV) outbreak from its inception, e.g. recent case and death rates. By “recent” I mean at WHO GAR reporting intervals, typically a few days. But the sites where I’d expect to find such (WHO, CDC etc) didn’t have them, at least in a synthesized form. So, I wrote an R script to scrape, compile, rearrange, and plot the data, for any country or all together, as taken from two sources. Starting with the WHO July 1 GAR report, tables of new and cumulative cases and deaths, categorized by degree of certainty, for each of the three countries in the outbreak, are given. Wikipedia has a less detailed table for all dates from March 25 on. I used it to obtain total cases and deaths up to July 1.
Below are graphs of the recent, per-day (1) case rates, and (2) death rates, from March 22. Each shows the raw data (thinner line), and a loess-fitted trend (thicker line). Note that reporting issues are partly, perhaps largely, responsible for extreme fluctuations in the raw data.
This is an abbreviated list of freely accessible, Ebola-related articles. Some are specific to the current outbreak, others are more general, some traditional science articles and others good online articles. [There are also a couple of useful links in the article below.] There will likely be a large number of articles emerging, potentially very large, given the nature of the situation.
1. Scientific literature and reports:
Atherstone et al., 2014. Ebola risk assessment in the pig value chain in Uganda (a good article, much more comprehensive than the title would indicate!)
Baize et al, 2014. Emergence of Zaire Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea-Preliminary Report
Bausch et al., 2014. Outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea: Where Ecology Meets Economy.
CDC Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Reports, 2014. Ebola Viral Disease Outbreak — West Africa.
Dudas and Rambaugh, 2014. Phylogenetic Analysis of Guinea 2014 EBOV Ebolavirus Outbreak.
Feldman et al, 2003. Ebola virus: from discovery to vaccine.
Gatherer, 2014, (in press). The 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak in west Africa
Legrand et al., E&I, 2007. Understanding the dynamics of Ebola epidemics.
Leroy et al., 2001. Early immune responses accompanying human asymptomatic Ebola infections
Muyembe et al., 2012. Ebola virus outbreaks in Africa: Past and present
Vanessa and Matthias, 2012. Infection Control During Filoviral Hemorrhagic Fever Outbreaks
2. Web pages:
WHO, 2014. Ebola virus disease, West Africa – update 10 July 2014
WHO, 2014. EBV FAQ
Laden, G., 2014. Ebola Outbreak in West Africa: Some basic information (Updated)
Black, 2014, on-site reporting (doctor with DWB, on scene in Sierra Leone), In the Shadow of Ebola and The First 24 Hour Shift
Poon, 2014, WUNC Radio. Ebola 101: The Facts Behind A Frightening Virus.
The West Africa Ebola epidemic is not waning. The latest (July 6) numbers from the WHO show that about 5.6% of the total cases (including probable and suspect cases), and 4.6% of the deaths, originated just in the four days from July 3 to July 6, inclusive. The minimum mortality rates are 350/626 (56%) for confirmed cases, and 543/894 (61%) when also including probable and suspect cases. The epidemic appears to be moving out of Guinea, and into Liberia and Sierra Leone, based on the recently reported cases. The WHO Ebola FAQ is here if you want to learn more about it, but on the outbreak itself there appears to be a serious dearth of reliable information.
Country Date Type New* Confirmed Probable Suspect Total 1 Guinea 07_08 Cases 0 294 96 18 408 2 Liberia 07_08 Cases 16 63 30 38 131 3 S.L. 07_08 Cases 34 269 34 2 305 4 Total 07_08 Cases 50 626 160 58 844 5 Guinea 07_08 Deaths 2 195 96 16 307 6 Liberia 07_08 Deaths 9 41 28 15 84 7 S.L. 07_08 Deaths 14 114 11 2 127 8 Total 07_08 Deaths 25 350 135 33 518 # *New cases (reported since 07_03) are neither classified nor included in Total
Updated values as of 7-10-14:
Country Date Type New* Confirmed Probable Suspect Total 1 Guinea 07_10 Cases 1 296 96 17 409 2 Liberia 07_10 Cases 11 70 32 40 142 3 S.L. 07_10 Cases 32 298 34 5 337 4 Total 07_10 Cases 44 664 162 62 888 5 Guinea 07_10 Deaths 2 197 96 16 309 6 Liberia 07_10 Deaths 4 44 28 16 88 7 S.L. 07_10 Deaths 15 127 11 4 142 8 Total 07_10 Deaths 21 368 135 36 539 # *New cases (reported since 07_08) are neither classified nor included in Total
Update:
1. New articles, both good, on Doctors Without Borders and The Economist web sites.
2. The Wikipedia page on the topic contains a summary table of the weekly course of reported cases and deaths since March.
Ecologically Orientated 