This last Thursday, Liberian health officials announced that they discovered the Ebola virus responsible for recent epidemics in a bat in Liberia. The bat was not associated with any human infections, and Liberia has not had any human cases of Ebola since 2016. The West African epidemic in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone is believed to have started with a young Guinean boy's exposure to an infected bat.
Virologist from Columbia University Simon J. Anthony's team found the genetic material from a mouth swab from a bat in the species Miniopterus inflatus. The research team came from the Liberian government, Columbia University, the University of California, Davis, and the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance. The research was funded by the United States Agency for International Development and is part of a project called Predict, which attempts to discover viruses before they cause epidemics.
Dr. Anthony said, "It's an incomplete study, a work in progress... It feels premature scientifically, but on the other hand, you have the public health aspect. We do have enough data to suggest to me that it is Ebola Zaire in this bat. We agree with our Liberian government partners that this information should be shared."
Educating the public about how to avoid contact with bats may work to prevent outbreaks. Still, some advice, such as avoiding caves and mines, may be easier to follow than other forms of education, such as explaining to hunters and cooks how to distinguish one bat species from another.
Lab work is still being conducted to determine whether the virus found in the bat is exactly the same strain that caused the West African epidemic. So far, the 20% of the genome that has been studied matches the epidemic strain.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/health/ebola-bat-liberia-epidemic.html
-- Caroline Aung
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