REFILE-Inside an African Lab that Helped Crack the Hantavirus Outbreak
Scientists in Dakar identified the Andes strain within 24 hours, helping WHO assess transmission risk after three passengers died.
- On May 5, the Institut Pasteur de Dakar received specimens from the MV Hondius cruise ship stranded off Cape Verde and identified the pathogen as the Andes strain of hantavirus within 24 hours.
- About 150 passengers and crew aboard the vessel faced a deadly threat; the Andes strain kills about one in three victims and carries an incubation period up to six weeks.
- Scientists at the Institut Pasteur worked through the night sequencing the virus, with laboratories in South Africa and Switzerland reaching identical conclusions. Testing revealed no significant mutations compared to the 2018–19 Argentina outbreak.
- Dr. Moussa Moise Diagne, head of the sequencing platform at Institut Pasteur, stated "the most important thing now is to know what is the window of exposure in Latin America."
- The US National Institutes of Health recently ended funding for the Centres for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases Network, though the US Department of Health and Human Services stated it remains committed to global infectious disease threats.
14 Articles
14 Articles
REFILE-Inside an African lab that helped crack the hantavirus outbreak
The role of the West African lab has not previously been described in detail, and shows how global research networks can help contain outbreaks. "It's crucial to have, in different parts of the world, the capacity and capabilities to detect those different pathogens," said Dr. Moussa Moise Diagne, a virologist and head of the sequencing platform at Institut Pasteur de Dakar.
Times of India
The Economic TimesHantavirus outbreak: How an African lab identified the deadly Andes strain
A hantavirus scare aboard a cruise ship off Cape Verde prompted a rapid scientific response, with researchers in Senegal quickly identifying the deadly Andes strain. The swift analysis, led by the Institut Pasteur de Dakar and supported by international research networks, enabled health authorities to assess and manage the outbreak effectively. The episode underscores the critical role of advanced disease surveillance laboratories and global sci…
Director-General of Sa de Cabo Verde ensured that the epis did not affect national tourism, which currently exceeds 1.3 million es of annual visitors.
It circulates on social networks a video that shows several stacked garbage bags from which a person appears. This individual appears smoking and the messages that share the clip ensure that it is a supposed corpse of a person pretending to be a victim of hantavirus, which would prove that the virus is a montage. However, it is a bulb. The outbreak of hantavirus originated on the cruiser MV Hondius has led to the proliferation of disinformation …
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