Ebola Alert! US State Department
By stephaniedaily | August 7, 2014 0 Comments
The US State Department has assembled this list of bullet
points worded in plain language for easy comprehension on
the Ebola virus. Please READ and be aware:
• The suspected reservoirs for Ebola are fruit bats.
• Transmission to humans is thought to originate from
infected bats or primates that have become infected by bats.
• Undercooked infected bat and primate (bush) meat
transmits the virus to humans.
• Human to human transmission is only achieved by physical
contact with a person who is acutely and gravely ill from the
Ebola virus or their body fluids. Continue…
• Transmission among humans is almost exclusively among
caregiver family members or health care workers tending to
the very ill.
• The virus is easily killed by contact with soap, bleach,
sunlight, or drying. A washing machine will kill the virus in
clothing saturated with infected body fluids.
• A person can incubate the virus without symptoms for 2-21
days, the average being 5-8 days before becoming ill. THEY
ARE NOT CONTAGIOUS until they are acutely ill.
• Only when ill does the viral load express itself first in the
blood and then in other bodily fluids (to include vomit,
faeces, urine, breast milk, semen and sweat).
• If you are walking around you are not infectious to others.
• There are documented cases from Kikwit, DRC of an Ebola
outbreak in a village that had the custom of children never
touching an ill adult. Children living for days in small one
room huts with parents who died from Ebola did not become
infected.
• You cannot contract Ebola by handling money, buying local
bread or swimming in a pool.
• There is no medical reason to stop flights, close borders,
restrict travel or close embassies, businesses or schools.
• As always practice good hand washing techniques, but you
will not contract Ebola if you do not touch a dying person.