Noted infectious disease experts have said that the current strain of Ebola virus plaguing Africa and slowly spreading in the United States is potentially much more lethal than previous strains identified by virologists.<\/p>\n
As reported by\u00a0Washington\u2019s Blog<\/em>, Dr. Michael Osterholm, the head of the Center for Infection Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, a prominent public health researcher who is nationally recognized, gave a talk in recent days explaining what another top Ebola virologist has found.<\/p>\n During his talk, which was broadcast on C-SPAN, Osterholm said Gary Kobinger, chief of Special Pathogens for Canada\u2019s national health agency, has said the current Ebola strain appears to be far worse than any previous strain. He added that Kobinger believes that the current strain could more easily be spread through aerosols than those previously identified as well.<\/p>\n \u201cToday I\u2019ve been given permission \u2013 something I\u2019ve known about for a few weeks\u2026 when I wrote the piece, I knew about this, and it\u2019s concerned me greatly,\u201d said Osterholm, in discussing an article that he previously wrote on the issue with an audience at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a video clip that can be seen\u00a0here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2018It is very worrisome to me\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cGary Kobinger and colleagues at Winnipeg \u2013 the Canadian National Lab \u2013 actually took one of the [Ebola] strains from Guinea and put it into macaques [monkeys],\u201d in early September, he said. \u201cWhat they saw was remarkable. It was unlike any of the\u00a0Ebola<\/a>\u00a0viruses they\u2019ve seen in monkeys. It was much, much more severe; the pathology in the lungs was remarkable, and, as Gary said \u2013 who is one of the most prominent Ebola virologists in the world \u2013 said, \u2018It is very worrisome to me, about what I saw there.\u2019 Maybe this is a different\u00a0virus<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n