Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: Supplement, September 26, 2014 / Vol. 63 / No.3

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Estimating the Future Number of Cases in the Ebola Epidemic — Liberia and Sierra Leone, 2014–2015
• Journal Article:
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Supplement
• Personal Author:
  Meltzer, Martin I. ; Atkins, Charisma Y. ; Santibanez, Scott ; Knust, Barbara ; Petersen, Brett W. ; Ervin, Elizabeth D. ; Nichol, Stuart T. ; Damon, Inger K. ; Washington, Michael L.
• Corporate Authors:
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.) ; National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (U.S.). Division of Preparedness and Emerging Infections ; National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (U.S.). Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology
• Description:
  Related document: Generic Ebola Response (ER) : modeling the spread of disease impact & intervention.
  
  The first cases of the current West African epidemic of Ebola virus disease (hereafter referred to as Ebola) were reported on March 22, 2014, with a report of 49 cases in Guinea. By August 31, 2014, a total of 3,685 probable, confirmed, and suspected cases in West Africa had been reported. To aid in planning for additional disease-control efforts, CDC constructed a modeling tool called Ebola Response to provide estimates of the potential number of future cases. If trends continue without scale-up of effective interventions, by September 30, 2014, Sierra Leone and Liberia will have a total of approximately 8,000 Ebola cases. A potential underreporting correction factor of 2.5 also was calculated. Using this correction factor, the model estimates that approximately 21,000 total cases will have occurred in Liberia and Sierra Leone by September 30, 2014. Reported cases in Liberia are doubling every 15–20 days, and those in Sierra Leone are doubling every 30–40 days. The Ebola Response modeling tool also was used to estimate how control and prevention interventions can slow and eventually stop the epidemic. In a hypothetical scenario, the epidemic begins to decrease and eventually end if approximately 70% of persons with Ebola are in medical care facilities or Ebola treatment units (ETUs) or, when these settings are at capacity, in a non-ETU setting such that there is a reduced risk for disease transmission (including safe burial when needed). In another hypothetical scenario, every 30-day delay in increasing the percentage of patients in ETUs to 70% was associated with an approximate tripling in the number of daily cases that occur at the peak of the epidemic (however, the epidemic still eventually ends). Officials have developed a plan to rapidly increase ETU capacities and also are developing innovative methods that can be quickly scaled up to isolate patients in non-ETU settings in a way that can help disrupt Ebola transmission in communities. The U.S. government and international organizations recently announced commitments to support these measures. As these measures are rapidly implemented and sustained, the higher projections presented in this report become very unlikely.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Disease Outbreaks Disease Transmission, Infectious Epidemiologic Methods Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Epidemiology Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Transmission Models, Biological
• Source:
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Supplement, 2014; v.63, no. 3
• Series:
  Supplements: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• ISSN:
  2380-8950 (print) ; 2380-8942 (digital)
• Pubmed ID:
  25254986
• Document Type:
  Journal Issue
• Place as Subject:
  Liberia ; Sierra Leone
• Pages in Document:
  20 pdf pages
• Volume:
  63
• Issue:
  3
• Collection(s):
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:644a222cf059703f1faada86a5ff723c0c33f3016d323553b6f4e9cec02688388652a7b4f8458585b0612bb96d824acfe88c31595728ae3c59ce3a9ad69dabfa
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/24901/cdc_24901_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 965.12 KB ]