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\nA health worker takes a woman’s temperature as part of Ebola screening efforts in Goma<\/p>\n
Trials for three potential vaccines against the Ebola strain that has killed thousands in the DR Congo should begin by October or November, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.<\/p>\n
The official death toll from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s deadliest-ever Ebola outbreak passed more than 3,000 people, out of over 6,000 infected.<\/p>\n
The vast central African country’s 17th Ebola outbreak was declared on 15 May.<\/p>\n
However, the WHO believes the deadly virus began spreading under the radar as early as late January.<\/p>\n
Responders have been playing catch-up and scrambling for ways to halt the spread as a result, in the restive east of the country plagued by a litany of armed groups.<\/p>\n
Among the many challenges facing the response is the lack of any approved vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the outbreak.<\/p>\n
The WHO said efficacy trials for three potential vaccines were drawing closer.<\/p>\n
“Two new vaccines against Bundibugyo virus are now in safety trials in the UK and Canada,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.<\/p>\n
One is being developed by the US-based Moderna group using mRNA technology and another by the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n
Hopes for cross-protection<\/p>\n
The WHO has also recommended a full-scale human trial of Ervebo, a vaccine approved for use against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola, to see if it offered any cross-protection against Bundibugyo.<\/p>\n
Early data suggests that Ervebo, which is made by Merck, could offer some degree of protection in humans against the other strain.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Tedros insisted that trials were necessary as “we do not know whether it is effective against Bundibugyo”.<\/p>\n
Much of the early data came from animal testing.<\/p>\n
Mr Tedros said the WHO was “working with partners to progress all three vaccines to efficacy trials in (the) DRC, starting in October or November”.<\/p>\n
The UN health agency’s vaccines chief Kate O’Brien explained that the plan was to set up a single trial to test the efficiency of multiple vaccines.<\/p>\n
\nA health worker takes a woman’s temperature as part of Ebola screening efforts in Goma<\/p>\n
“Given that Ervebo is a licenced vaccine, it will be probably the first vaccine that will go into the trial,” she said.<\/p>\n
A batch of 16,250 doses for use by frontline medical personnel arrived in the DRC in July.<\/p>\n
Vaccination began shortly afterwards in Kisangani, the capital of the northeastern Tshopo province.<\/p>\n
In recommendations, the WHO advised that, for the time being, Ervebo should only be used against Bundibugyo as part of a clinical trial.<\/p>\n
Ms O’Brien said that frontline healthcare workers should also only be vaccinated with Ervebo as part of research into whether it was effective against the strain or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trials for three potential vaccines against the Ebola strain that has killed thousands in the DR Congo should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-758130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}