Next, projections of #Ebola escalating to 1.4 million cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone by January 2015. .http://t.co/w3aKCI8OmG @CDCgov
— RNZ – Nine To Noon (@ninetonoon) September 23, 2014
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/23/cdc-ebola-1-4-million.html
he number of Ebola cases in West Africa could swell to 1.4 million by mid-January if the epidemic is not contained and the wide-scale response does not continue, according to new estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The estimate is part of a new modeling tool the CDC created for mapping the response to the Ebola virus, which the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates has infected more than 5,800 people and killed at least 2,800 in the latest outbreak.
The CDC said its modeling tool determined that the number of cases has been “significantly underreported,” by a factor of 2.5. Using data gathered in Sierra Leone and Liberia in August, the agency report projected that Ebola cases could reach 550,000 to 1.4 million in the two countries by Jan. 20, 2015, if the immediate response does not continue — with the caveat that those numbers “do not reflect current condition.”
The CDC did not use the tool to project figures in Guinea because cases there have developed in a way that could not be reliably mapped, the agency said.
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning, CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden stressed that the estimate represented a worst-case scenario and was based on data collected before the response to the virus had seriously ramped up.“It takes time to both see the data and the trends,” he told reporters. “Obviously we don’t think that will come to pass,” he said in reference to the projection of 1.4 million cases, adding that the most important findings of the model are that “a surge [in containment efforts] now will break the back of the epidemic.”
