What Is Marburg Virus: This week, it was confirmed that the Marburg virus outbreak in Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa, was the pathogen’s first occurrence there. At least 16 cases and nine fatalities have been reported. There are no approved treatments for the Marburg virus, which is closely related to the Ebola virus, but vaccines are being developed.
In response to the extraordinary Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014, which resulted in over 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths, anti-Ebola drugs and vaccines were developed. In fact, some of these were used again for COVID-19 in 2020. This information could expedite the development of Marburg virus vaccines and treatments
What Is Marburg Virus?
Marburg, a filovirus, is related to its better-known cousin Ebola. These viruses are part of a larger group that is capable of causing viral hemorrhagic fever, fever, and bleeding illness. Compared to more common viral hemorrhagic fevers such as dengue, yellow fever, and Lassa fever, filoviruses are the deadliest of all hemorrhagic fevers.
The first Marburg outbreaks occurred in 1967 while lab workers in Germany and Yugoslavia were handling African green monkeys imported from Uganda. A facility in Marburg, Germany, discovered the virus. Since then, sporadic outbreaks have occurred in a handful of African countries, albeit less frequently than with Ebola.
The largest was in 2005 in Angola. (374 cases and 329 fatalities) Marburg primarily infects fruit bats, but it can also infect primates, pigs, and other species. Human outbreaks begin following human contact with an infected animal.
It causes symptoms comparable to Ebola, including fever, headache, malaise, vomiting, diarrhoea, and aches and pains. Primarily, it is transmitted between humans through direct contact, particularly with bodily fluids. Five days later, the bleeding begins, and up to 90 percent of those infected may die as a result.
How Concern Should We Have?
Concern exists that Marburg could spread like Ebola in 2014, become a much larger outbreak, and spread globally. It may spread to many other countries due to travel. In 2014, Ebola cases spread from Guinea to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In addition to these three countries, seven other countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, also experienced travel-related cases. Given the high fatality rate, the lack of effective medications and vaccinations, and the lessons learned from Ebola in 2014, extreme caution should be exercised.
How To Prevent Its Spread
Even though researchers will test Marburg vaccinations currently being developed to combat this disease, non-pharmaceutical approaches offer the best chance of quickly reducing the pandemic. This includes thorough case detection and monitoring, the identification and isolation of sick individuals, the tracking of their contacts, and the quarantining of contacts to prevent the disease’s spread.
Rapid epidemic intelligence derived from open-source data can aid in the identification of early warning signs in low-income nations with ineffective surveillance systems. In this situation, news articles, social media, and other data are utilised to search for patterns that may indicate disease outbreaks in specific regions.
By analysing tweets about disease symptoms in the region, we were able to demonstrate that we could identify Ebola in the West African pandemic several months in advance.
If the current epidemic worsens and spreads further, the World Health Organization may declare a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” as it did in 2019 with the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Currently, the response to this Marburg virus pandemic can be informed by our knowledge and experience with the disastrous, poorly contained Ebola epidemic in 2014, which should aid in bringing it swiftly under control.
