Ebola Could Infect 1.5 Million Soon, Says CDC
US Centers for Disease Control pandemic warning based on projections by respected biological research institution
By Jayalakshmi K
IBTimes.com
September 28, 2014
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned Ebola could infect more than 1.5 million people by the end of January, based on statistical projections of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI).
The forecast supports drastically higher projections released earlier by epidemiologists at the VBI, who modelled the Ebola spread as part of the National Institutes of Health-sponsored project Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (Midas).
The World Health Organization (WHO) had predicted that 20,000 cases could be expected before the pandemic is controlled, but the new modelling shows 20,000 people could be infected in just one month.
If control measures are improved, the numbers could significantly reduce, said the forecast.
“If the disease keeps spreading as it has been, we estimate there could be hundreds of thousands of cases by the end of the year in Liberia alone,” said Bryan Lewis, a computational epidemiologist with the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory at VBI.
The VBI’s work with Ebola began in 2000 and is largely funded by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency: a little-known US military agency which attempts to predict global threats, including pandemics and attacks using weapons of mass destruction.
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