There are no vaccines or treatments for the strain of Ebola that has killed more than 200 people in the Congo and Uganda, but several are being urgently developed in the hope of reining in the outbreak.
More than 875 cases of the Bundibugyo strain?have been confirmed, including 202 deaths, in a little over a month, the African Union¡¯s health agency said on Thursday.
However, the true scale of the outbreak remains unknown, humanitarian organizations have warned, because the virus could still be spreading in remote, poor and conflict-wracked areas of the?Congo.
To help address the crisis, scientists, pharmaceutical companies and funding bodies have been racing to develop new vaccines and treatments that can be swiftly and safely tested in humans.
Here are the main options being considered.
The vaccine candidate the World Health Organization has dubbed ¡°most promising¡± is based on the rVSV platform used to make the only licensed Ebola vaccine.
The new jab has been tweaked to target Bundibugyo, rather than the more common Zaire strain.
The WHO has estimated it will take seven to nine months before the new vaccine is ready to be tested in humans.
Thomas Geisbert, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch who developed both rVSV vaccines, said?¡°this maybe could be accelerated to six-seven months.¡±
Another vaccine candidate, which uses the ChAdOx1 platform that underpinned AstraZeneca¡¯s COVID-19 shot, could be ready sooner.
It is being developed by the University of Oxford along with the Serum Institute of India, the world¡¯s largest vaccine maker.
U.S. pharma firm Moderna is working on its own Bundibugyo vaccine that uses the mRNA technology it pioneered against COVID-19.
The Oxford and Moderna vaccines could be ready to start phase 1 trials in humans in two to three months, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a non-profit organization that funds vaccine research, said on Thursday.
¡°If things go smoothly, this could be as early as July,¡± a CEPI spokesperson?added.
CEPI has pledged millions of dollars to help develop the three vaccine candidates.
The deputy CEO of CEPI, Aurelia Nguyen, said?the ¡°three bets¡± were on vaccine platforms that all ¡°have different advantages?but also different weaknesses.¡±
It remains to be seen which could prove effective, but it was important to have ¡°all chances on our side,¡± she emphasized.
Nguyen also pointed out that it took two years to bring a 2018 outbreak of the Zaire strain in the Congo and Uganda under control ¡ª even though vaccine doses were ready to be shipped within 72 hours.
The WHO has also recommended prioritizing three treatments for swift trials.
One is called remdesivir, an antiviral made by U.S. pharma firm Gilead that used to treat COVID-19....
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