Ebola outbreak declared on African continent in Ivory Coast – WHO "very concerned"
 

UPDATED: 06:50, Thu, Aug 19, 2021

An Ebola outbreak has been declared in the Ivory Coast, as authorities scramble to contain the deadly virus that the World Health Organization (WHO) is "very concerned" about.

The African country reported its first case of Ebola in more than 25 years on Saturday, in Abidjan. Another suspected case has now been identified. Authorities are vaccinating hundreds of people as they race to contain the spread of the deadly hemorrhagic fever in the country’s commercial capital.

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said the UN agency was “very concerned” that more cases may be detected in the country's economic hub, with a population of more than four million. Ebola, which is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids, causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding.

Mr Jasarevic said: "Preliminary investigations and genomic sequencing to identify the strain show that it is likely the Zaire strain of the virus.

"Further investigations are required to confirm these early results."

Mr. Jasarevic said there was "no indication" that the case in Ivory Coast was linked to the cases in Guinea.

The confirmed case has been identified as an 18-year-old from Guinea who traveled overland, arriving in Abidjan last Wednesday aboard a bus. When she left Guinea, she was already exhibiting symptoms that continued to intensify. She was admitted to a hospital on Thursday with a fever and is currently receiving treatment.

It came after Guinea, which declared an end to a four-month-long Ebola outbreak in June and marked the African continent as Ebola-free.


https://www.express.co.uk/news/scien...ea-abidjan-scn

Unfortunately you can never really declare a place to be "virus free." This young person "traveled overland" and somehow encountered it in the wild. All you can do is to have a credible public health response that is poised to go into action.

At least they have a vaccine for it now. At the beginning of the last outbreak, they didn't.

 

express.co.uk = Daily Express, a UK sensationalist tabloid.

There are a couple of WHO articles:
14th Aug: https://www.afro.who.int/news/cote-divoire-declares-first-ebola-outbreak-more-25-years
17th Aug: https://www.afro.who.int/news/cote-divoire-starts-ebola-vaccination-frontline-workers

Also, Wikipedia has a list of Ebola outbreaks, divided into "Major or massive cases" and "Minor or single cases" - this instance is currently in the latter.

Apart from them referring to it as an outbreak, which is still within the definition of the word, what exactly was sensationalist in this article that was not contained in the first one you linked to?

From your link:
As opposed to "very concerned" in mine.

 

Really? Ok, I'll give the benefit of the doubt that this is ignorance over disingenuity.

Compare this:
With these:
If you cannot now see the blatant sensationalism in the Express, read the first two paragraphs here and try again.

This is a serious issue for people in Abidjan.

For UK tabloids, it's nothing more than an opportunity for fear-mongering to try and increase their readership and profits.

Your reading comprehension is sub-par at best.

I said:

As posted and why I put it in bold. So you wouldn't go off on a tangent posting articles from other sites as a straw man argument to back up your own hyperbole.

^ Calm down and don't pointlessly throw around fashionable internet terms.
There is no straw man here, and no hyberbole.
Nobody is disputing the news item as such, only pointing out that the Daily Express is sensationalist. It might be tangent to the topic, but still relevant to this thread.
You asked why, and got a detailed, founded and well-mannered answer (kudos to boughtonp, I usually just give up in exasperation), which you are now - needlessly - trying to deconstruct with increasing aggressiveness.

I'll use his response then.

 

Heh. Your response suggested a lack of understanding of what sensationalist means.

So I quoted the Express headline verbatim and contrasted it against other coverage in order to demonstrate the difference in tone and content - that you claim this as a strawman shows you don't understand what that term means either.

(An actual strawman might have been constructed by cherry-picking a different Express article as an example of how bad they can be. I did not do this. Nor did I pick the counter-examples using favourable criteria; there didn't seem to be many non-tabloid outlets covering the story.)

Claiming hyperbole indicates another case where it would beneficial to refresh your understanding.

Sensationalist maybe, but ebola is taken more seriously nowadays especially in light of the last major outbreak and this is not the first of recent ones. With an average 50% chance of death, any sign of an outbreak is newsworthy and in ebola terms 'minor' doesnt equate to nothing to worry about. All previous ones started small.