{"id":484708,"date":"2026-06-19T02:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T02:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/484708\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T02:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T02:40:09","slug":"the-vaccines-and-treatments-being-developed-for-ebola-outbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/484708\/","title":{"rendered":"The vaccines and treatments being developed for Ebola outbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are no vaccines or treatments for the strain of Ebola<\/a> that has killed more than 200 people in the Congo and Uganda, but several are being urgently developed in the hope of reining in the outbreak.<\/p>\n

More than 875 cases of the Bundibugyo strain<\/a>\u00a0have been confirmed, including 202 deaths, in a little over a month, the African Union\u2019s health agency said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

However, the true scale of the outbreak remains unknown, humanitarian organizations have warned, because the virus could still be spreading in remote, poor and conflict-wracked areas of the\u00a0Congo.<\/p>\n

To help address the crisis, scientists, pharmaceutical companies and funding bodies have been racing to develop new vaccines and treatments that can be swiftly and safely tested in humans.<\/p>\n

Here are the main options being considered.<\/p>\n

The vaccine candidate the World Health Organization has dubbed \u201cmost promising\u201d is based on the rVSV platform used to make the only licensed Ebola vaccine.<\/p>\n

The new jab has been tweaked to target Bundibugyo, rather than the more common Zaire strain.<\/p>\n

The WHO has estimated it will take seven to nine months before the new vaccine is ready to be tested in humans.<\/p>\n

Thomas Geisbert, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch who developed both rVSV vaccines, said\u00a0\u201cthis maybe could be accelerated to six-seven months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another vaccine candidate, which uses the ChAdOx1 platform that underpinned AstraZeneca\u2019s COVID-19 shot, could be ready sooner.<\/p>\n

It is being developed by the University of Oxford along with the Serum Institute of India, the world\u2019s largest vaccine maker.<\/p>\n

U.S. pharma firm Moderna is working on its own Bundibugyo vaccine that uses the mRNA technology it pioneered against COVID-19.<\/p>\n

The Oxford and Moderna vaccines could be ready to start phase 1 trials in humans in two to three months, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a non-profit organization that funds vaccine research, said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf things go smoothly, this could be as early as July,\u201d a CEPI spokesperson\u00a0added.<\/p>\n

CEPI has pledged millions of dollars to help develop the three vaccine candidates.<\/p>\n

The deputy CEO of CEPI, Aurelia Nguyen, said\u00a0the \u201cthree bets\u201d were on vaccine platforms that all \u201chave different advantages\u00a0but also different weaknesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen which could prove effective, but it was important to have \u201call chances on our side,\u201d she emphasized.<\/p>\n

Nguyen also pointed out that it took two years to bring a 2018 outbreak of the Zaire strain in the Congo and Uganda under control \u2014 even though vaccine doses were ready to be shipped within 72 hours.<\/p>\n

The WHO has also recommended prioritizing three treatments for swift trials.<\/p>\n

One is called remdesivir, an antiviral made by U.S. pharma firm Gilead that used to treat COVID-19….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are no vaccines or treatments for the strain of Ebola that has killed more than 200 people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[8425,23268,134,3193,111,139,69,30059,56936],"class_list":["post-484708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-congo","tag-ebola","tag-health","tag-medicine","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-uganda","tag-vaccinations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}