A study in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, Oct 17th, describes learnings about the mode of transmission of Ebola in a Liberian hospital.
In July 2014, The US Centers for Disease Control assisted the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Liberia in investigating a cluster of five Ebola cases among health care workers (HCW) who became ill while working in an Ebola Treatment Unit, an adjacent general hospital, or both.
Despite the temporal and geographic clustering of the five HCWs with Ebola, no common source exposure or chain of transmission to explain all five cases. It was found however, that multiple opportunities existed for transmission of Ebola virus to HCWs, including exposure to patients with undetected Ebola in the hospital, inadequate use of personal protective equipment during cleaning and disinfection of environmental surfaces in the hospital, and potential transmission from an ill HCW to another HCW.
No evidence was found of a previously unrecognized mode of transmission.
