Canadian scientists have shown that the deadliest form of the ebola virus could be transmitted by air between species. In experiments, they demonstrated that the virus was transmitted from pigs to monkeys without any direct contact between them. In their experiments, the pigs carrying the virus were housed in pens with the monkeys in close proximity but separated by a wire barrier. After eight days, some of the macaques were showing clinical signs typical of ebola and were euthanized.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20341423
The virus can survive in liquid or dried material for a number of days.
Multiple Ebola Virus Transmission Events and Rapid Decline of Central African Wildlife. Science,(2004) 303(5656), 387-390.
Filoviruses like Ebola have been of interest to the Pentagon since the late 1970s, mainly because Ebola and its fellow viruses have high mortality rates — in the current outbreak, roughly 60 percent to 72 percent of those who have contracted the disease have died — and its stable nature in aerosol make it attractive as a potential biological weapon.
http://www.navytimes.com/article/201408 ... 29285208=1
Ebola virus can be transmitted by air
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Wade Hampton III
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Re: Ebola virus can be transmitted by air
Not-so-nice to know that CDC over in Atlanta has a living host 
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John Flynn
Re: Ebola virus can be transmitted by air
Reston’s Link to Ebola, Nearly 25 Years Later
There is worldwide concern over the worst Ebola outbreak in history. The current outbreak has killed nearly 700 people in four African countries, according to the World Health Organization.
The hemorrhagic disease is half a world away, but when scientists study Ebola and how it spreads, they often look to Reston.
That’s right, Reston, Va.
There is a strain of Ebola called “Ebola Reston,” because it was discovered here in 1990.
There are five types of Ebola that can kill humans. Ebola Reston was discovered to only kill moneys, though
However, that discovery came after a serious medical investigation, chronicled in the book The Hot Zone.
Here’s what happened:
In the fall of 1989, Hazelton Laboratories had a lab at 1946 Isaac Newton Square West, where KinderCare is now located. The lab did animal experiments.
There were already about 500 macaque monkeys housed at the facility when 100 more were flown from the Philippines, according to an article in the Internet Journal of Preventative Medicine.
A month later, 29 of the 100 quarantined monkeys had died. During a necropsy, a veterinarian found one monkey’s spleen had tripled in size and hardened and there was blood in the intestines. After conducting several other necropsies he diagnosed the deaths as being caused by simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV), the Journal article said.
The Hazelton facility veterinarian then sent samples of the monkey tissues to the United States Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) for a conclusive diagnosis. Meanwhile, Hazelton lab workers began euthanizing the remaining animals, but sporadic deaths began occurring in several other rooms. Soon, 30 monkeys from a different shipment were dead.
More from the Journal:
“Several of us spent the better part of a day trying to catch it,” Dr. Jerry Jaxx said in a veterinary medical journal interview. “When we talk about the Reston incident, we compare the frustration of that day with the Hollywood version in the movie ‘Outbreak,’ in which an infected monkey was coaxed from a tree and captured within minutes. It is a great example of reality vs. Hollywood.’ ”
The runaway was later caught in the building.
Then the decontamination efforts began — an 11-day operation of scrubbing and bleaching. That was followed by electric frying pans cooking formaldehyde crystals for three days to rid the air of all toxins.
In the end, researchers concluded that the new species of Ebola was highly contagious in monkeys but not in humans. They also learned that the disease was not only found in Africa, since the monkeys had come from the Philippines.
The investigators determined aerosol transmission was particularly quick in a lab setting, because the virus appeared to pass between rooms to infect susceptible monkeys.
The monkeys from Reston had an impact in Ebola research since doctors were able to study their diseased or exposed-to-disease bodies.
http://www.restonnow.com/2014/07/31/res ... ars-later/
There is worldwide concern over the worst Ebola outbreak in history. The current outbreak has killed nearly 700 people in four African countries, according to the World Health Organization.
The hemorrhagic disease is half a world away, but when scientists study Ebola and how it spreads, they often look to Reston.
That’s right, Reston, Va.
There is a strain of Ebola called “Ebola Reston,” because it was discovered here in 1990.
There are five types of Ebola that can kill humans. Ebola Reston was discovered to only kill moneys, though
However, that discovery came after a serious medical investigation, chronicled in the book The Hot Zone.
Here’s what happened:
In the fall of 1989, Hazelton Laboratories had a lab at 1946 Isaac Newton Square West, where KinderCare is now located. The lab did animal experiments.
There were already about 500 macaque monkeys housed at the facility when 100 more were flown from the Philippines, according to an article in the Internet Journal of Preventative Medicine.
A month later, 29 of the 100 quarantined monkeys had died. During a necropsy, a veterinarian found one monkey’s spleen had tripled in size and hardened and there was blood in the intestines. After conducting several other necropsies he diagnosed the deaths as being caused by simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV), the Journal article said.
The Hazelton facility veterinarian then sent samples of the monkey tissues to the United States Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) for a conclusive diagnosis. Meanwhile, Hazelton lab workers began euthanizing the remaining animals, but sporadic deaths began occurring in several other rooms. Soon, 30 monkeys from a different shipment were dead.
More from the Journal:
- Back at USAMRIID another researcher discovered by electron microscopy that Ebola Zaire was responsible for the monkey deaths.
On Nov. 28, 1989 nearly six weeks after monkeys began dying in Reston, USAMRIID verified the Ebola finding. The following day, representatives from USAMRIID, the CDC, and the Virginia Department of Health met and developed an action plan. The CDC would handle people; USAMRIID would handle the monkeys and the monkey facility. Because of the threat that Ebola might spread to staff, Reston, and the greater Washington, DC community, the Army determined that all remaining monkeys would be immediately euthanized. The first task was to determine how best to administer a solution to a building potentially full of Ebola.
“Several of us spent the better part of a day trying to catch it,” Dr. Jerry Jaxx said in a veterinary medical journal interview. “When we talk about the Reston incident, we compare the frustration of that day with the Hollywood version in the movie ‘Outbreak,’ in which an infected monkey was coaxed from a tree and captured within minutes. It is a great example of reality vs. Hollywood.’ ”
The runaway was later caught in the building.
Then the decontamination efforts began — an 11-day operation of scrubbing and bleaching. That was followed by electric frying pans cooking formaldehyde crystals for three days to rid the air of all toxins.
In the end, researchers concluded that the new species of Ebola was highly contagious in monkeys but not in humans. They also learned that the disease was not only found in Africa, since the monkeys had come from the Philippines.
The investigators determined aerosol transmission was particularly quick in a lab setting, because the virus appeared to pass between rooms to infect susceptible monkeys.
The monkeys from Reston had an impact in Ebola research since doctors were able to study their diseased or exposed-to-disease bodies.
http://www.restonnow.com/2014/07/31/res ... ars-later/
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John Flynn
Re: Ebola virus can be transmitted by air
Ebola can be turned into bioweapon, Russian & UK experts warn
“Such possibility exists,” Vladimir Nikiforov, who heads the Department of Infectious Diseases at the FMBA’s Institution of Advanced Training, acknowledged at a press conference in Moscow.
“Actually, this virus can be used in the form of a spray, which can lead to very big trouble,” the disease expert is cited as saying by the RIA-Novosti news agency.
It’s very hard to track down efforts to create bioweapons, despite the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in place since 1972, he said.
“Biological weapons are nothing like a nuclear bomb… In order to make a nuclear bomb, one would require a uranium mine, a nuclear power plant and so on,” but biological weapons “are made in a small laboratory, which can be easily camouflaged,” Nikiforov said.
“You know that there are rogue states. And here's the thing, I can’t guarantee that some country isn’t preparing something of the kind,” he added.
Nikiforov words are echoed by his counterpart from Cambridge University, Dr Peter Walsh, who warned the UK public that a terrorist could use the Ebola virus to create a dirty bomb.
The biological anthropologist told the Sun newspaper that he fears “large number of horrific deaths” if “a group manages to harness the virus as a power then explodes it as a bomb in a highly populated public area.”
According to Walsh, there are just a few labs in the world, which possess the Ebola virus, and they are extremely well-protected.
“So the risk is that a terrorist group may seek to obtain the virus out in West Africa,” he said.
At least 961 people have died in the Ebola outbreak, which started in Guinea this March. It quickly spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, infecting in total over 1,700 people.
On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced an international health emergency over Ebola, calling the current outbreak the most severe since the virus was first identified in humans back in 1976.
“The likelihood is that things [with Ebola] will get worse before they get better,” Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s head of health security, warned.
Meanwhile, the US health authorities have eased safety restrictions on an experimental TKM-Ebola drug, which could clear the way for its use to treat patients infected with the deadly virus.
On Thursday, Russia’s former chief medical officer, Gennady Onischenko, said that he can’t rule out the possibility that the Western African outbreak is suspicious.
“I am concerned about the prevalence and pathogenicity of the situation, which is too much even for Ebola. Too many people are dying. I don’t rule out that there’s something artificial here… What is happening with Ebola there, could there also be something man-made about it?” he said.
http://rt.com/news/178992-ebola-biologi ... errorists/