Andreas Niu, M.D. at the University of Florida, also notes that both of these diseases were linked to a single, unique environmental trigger: “The viruses and bacteria that cause Ebola virus and Sabin had evolved in the same environment and spread from person to person through direct contact. That’s one of the reasons we found such a small amount of virus infection in people who had never been exposed to that virus.” He calls it unlikely that these viruses had entered or remained in humans through casual contact.

A study in The Lancet this year also indicates that there is a “moderate” risk that an infected person can transmit the disease via sexual contact even when the other person is not infected, but that risk is very low. The authors concluded: “We believe that the current epidemiology and the high prevalence of Ebola virus disease suggest that at present the risk of Ebola infection from sexual transmission in many West African communities is low. We see no evidence so far, however, that the existing protective measures are effective in preventing this infection.”

If such an incident does exist, it would most likely be limited to an area where the virus is widespread. “To see the transmission of EBOV between two separate populations, at close to the epidemic scale is quite remarkable,” explains Dr. Niu. “But the current situation is not similar to a case of transmission. It is difficult to believe, therefore, that Ebola can spread further between two populations. ”

Dr. Michael Fuchs:

“It seems difficult to think it could spread much further,” says Michael Fuchs, professor emeritus of microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. But, he adds, “It’s not impossible and the risk would be quite small. There are a lot of infectious viral diseases that can cause this kind of high mortality rate… The situation is not that different than if you have a case of malaria where there are very, very infectious infections involved. ”

The risk is higher than the risk of contracting one of those infectious diseases after having gotten that infectious disease from an infected person, such as through blood transfusion.

Fuchs:

“In both cases, you get very high transmission rates from the person who actually got the disease,” Fuchs says. “In both of those cases, it may not be in your blood but it may be in your cough. In the context of transmission from an individual to the