SÃO PAULO — Brazil health authorities cleared two suspected Ebola cases in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro after both patients tested negative for the virus. The patients had recently traveled from countries affected by the current Ebola outbreak in Central Africa.
A 37-year-old man in São Paulo who had traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo tested negative for Ebola and was diagnosed with meningitis. He exhibited symptoms including fever. In Rio de Janeiro, a patient from Belgium who had recently traveled to Uganda also tested negative for Ebola and was instead found to have malaria. That patient displayed viral symptoms such as cough, chills, and diarrhoea.
If either case had tested positive, it would have marked the first Ebola infection outside Africa since the current outbreak began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Health authorities in Brazil initiated standard protocols for suspected viral hemorrhagic fevers upon the patients’ presentation, including isolation and laboratory testing.
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has generated more than 1,000 suspected cases and at least 246 deaths. Cases are concentrated in the Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu provinces. Uganda has separately reported nine confirmed Ebola cases and one death.
The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, which kills approximately one-third of those infected and for which no proven vaccine currently exists. Three new vaccines are under development to address this strain, including efforts by the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the University of Oxford, and the pharmaceutical company Moderna.
Ebola viruses typically originate in animals, most commonly fruit bats, and human outbreaks can begin when people consume or handle infected animals. The virus spreads among humans through direct contact with bodily fluids of an infected person, including sweat, saliva, blood, semen, excrement, urine, and vomit.