Liberia's Ebola epidemic could be eliminated by June, researchers say (STA BREAKING NEWS and ARCHIVES)

by Theresa , Wednesday, January 14, 2015, 00:20

A new analysis of Ebola cases in West Africa predicts that the epidemic in Liberia could be eliminated by June if medical workers can hospitalize 85 percent of those infected.

"That's a realistic possibility but not a foregone conclusion," wrote lead author John Drake, a computational ecologist and epidemiologist at the University of Georgia's Odom School of Ecology.

"What's needed is to maintain the current level of vigilance and keep pressing forward as hard as we can," he wrote.

The analysis was published in the journal PLOS Biology on Tuesday — the same day that the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered an assessment of the situation, according to Reuters.

"I remain very confident we can get to zero cases in this epidemic if we continue the way we're going and nothing unexpected happens," CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden told officials in Washington, D.C.

Due to the unprecedented spread of the virus, some experts have feared that Ebola might become endemic to West Africa, a region in which humans had never before been infected.

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