United States: According to an announcement by the health minister of the country, a Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda has claimed six lives already.
More about the news
Sabin Nsanzimana, the minister, claimed that most of the victims were healthcare workers working in an intensive care unit of the hospital.
Moreover, twenty cases in total have been reported since the onset of the outbreak on Friday, BBC reported.
Dangerous Marburg
Marburg, which has a fatality rate of up to 88 percent, has the same source as Ebola. It does spread into humans from fruit bats and then via contact with bodily fluids from infected individuals.
The symptoms of Marburg involve high fever, muscular pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and deaths linked with high blood loss.
According to the World Health Organization, there are no available treatments or vaccines to contain the virus. However, various blood products, drugs, and immune therapies are being made.
As per Rawanda, they have been performing intensive virus tracing, along with rigorous surveillance and testing, to help contain the spread.
What more are the officials stating?
According to the health ministry of the country, more than three hundred people have been traced, and they have come into contact with those affected by the Marburg virus.
He thus asked people to prevent physical contact in order to help curb the spread of the disease. A maximum of the cases are reported in the capital, Kigali, BBC reported.
The Advisory by the US embassy in the city has warned its employees to work remotely for the coming weeks.
More about the Marburg virus
As per the WHO, Marburg has the killing tendency of more than half of its victims on average, whereas the previously held outbreaks killed between 24 percent and 88 percent of patients.
The virus was first reported in 1967 when 31 people contracted the virus, and seven were left dead in the simultaneous outbreaks in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany and Belgrade in Serbia.
The origin of the outbreak was traced back to African green monkeys imported from Uganda.