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posted by martyb on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-not-hyperbole dept.

According to Bruce Lee of Forbes magazine, the world now has an actual vaccine effective against Ebola.

It's official. We now have a real Ebola vaccine. Not a kind-of-almost-sort-of-there vaccine. Not an experimental-use vaccine. Not a vaccine just for macaques. No, this is a vaccine that the European Commission has just approved for use in humans, the first of its kind.

It is worth noting that there are four variants of Ebola that infect humans, however the one this vaccine "Ervebo" is effective against is the deadly Zaire Ebola virus.

Ervebo is a genetically engineered, replication-competent, attenuated live vaccine. Data from clinical trials and compassionate use programs have shown that Ervebo protects against Ebola virus disease in humans following a single dose administration.

The vaccine has been tested on approximately 16,000 people so far with very good results

Health officials have been using the vaccine on an experimental basis to try to control Ebola outbreaks that have been going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) [...] the war-torn DRC hasn't been the easiest place to test the vaccine:

Nevertheless, researchers managed to test the efficacy of the vaccine in the country. As the WHO reported in April, this vaccine had an estimated protective efficacy of 97.5% in field studies there. That would mean if a hundred people vaccinated were exposed to the virus, less than three would end up getting infected. That's a remarkably high efficacy. After all, nothing in life is 100%. However, keep in mind that the efficacy of a vaccine also depends on how many people around you are vaccinated

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing Merck's application for approval of the vaccine.

Related Coverage
Two Effective Treatments for Ebola Announced


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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:43PM

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:43PM (#920515) Journal

    Today in EU, roche and novartis have been caught CONSPIRING to remove the cheaper treatment, so that Italian health system had to pay for the pricier one.

    Come on, conspiracy denialists, rationalize away.

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