Travel bans and airborne transmission: Ebola myths busted

Myth 1: Ebola is about to go airborne

Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids — blood, diarrhea, vomit, semen, breast milk and sweat — of a sick person with symptoms.

Although technically a droplet of mucus sneezed from a sick person could land on one’s hand and transmit the disease — through a cut in the skin or touching of the mouth, eyes, or nose — that would not qualify as airborne transmission. Dr. Tom Frieden of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently called the likelihood of that “theoretically possible as opposed to what actually happens in the real world.”

Some fear that the virus could change transmission mode and go airborne, but the likelihood of that is extremely low. In 100 years, a human virus has never changed how it is transmitted.

Myth 2: Travel bans would contain and solve the outbreak

Infectious disease experts and public health officials are unanimously opposed to implementing travel bans.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said his advisers have all warned against such a measure.

Dr. Frieden has said a travel ban would hurt the health agency’s abilities to track the virus, as they currently know which travellers to screen.

It would also hamper the ability to send aid into the most affected regions where it is most crucial to contain the outbreak.

Air travel bans have never proved effective at containing viral outbreaks, as evidenced in the wake of 9/11. A study shows the two week air travel ban may have delayed the flu season in 2011, but the virus eventually spread anyway.

Myth 3: Supplements and other cures are available for Ebola

There is no known cure for Ebola. Experimental treatments and vaccines are undergoing clinical trials, including the Canadian-made vaccine being tested on humans in the United States, but nothing has been approved for mass market production.

Dallas nurse Nina Pham and two others received a blood plasma transfusion from Dr. Kent Brantly, an American mission worker who was treated in the U.S. and recovered from the disease.

Dr. Brantly himself was treated with experimental drug Zmapp, but it is not known if the drug or his own antibodies fought off the infection.

Dr. Brantly offered his blood to Thomas Duncan, but their blood type wasn’t the same.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a letter to three supplement companies on Wednesday for suggesting they could offer natural remedies for the virus.

Myth 4: Ebola is extremely contagious

There are heightened concerns about Ebola transmission given a second nurse from Texas travelled by plane the day before she tested positive for the virus. But, are these fears valid?

Health officials say the nurse should not have been on a plane at all — given that she cared for someone with the virus who later died — but added that the risk of other passengers catching it is low.

Firstly, the more contagious an infected person is, the more likely he or she can spread the virus. However, you can’t catch it by just being in close proximity to the infected person.

The World Health Organization says Ebola can only spread through “direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials contaminated with these fluids.”

Officials say healthcare workers and others (family, friends) who have close contact with the patient pose a higher risk of infection, as well as those who handle the dead bodies for burial practices.

In Liberia, the current epicentre of the outbreak, there have been 4,249 cases out of a population of about 3.94 million people, meaning 0.1 per cent of the population has been infected.

Myth 5: This is the first Ebola outbreak in history

Although the infection and fatality rate of the recent Ebola outbreak is staggering and the largest to date, this is not the first crisis in history.

The CDC says the first outbreak occurred in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo with 318 cases and 280 deaths. Since then, there has been pockets of outbreaks in 1979, the early- and mid-90s and almost every year in the 21st Century, in countries like Sudan, Gabon, Uganda and Congo.

However, this is first time the virus has spread to more than one country. The CDC reports 8,997 cases of Ebola with 4,493 deaths in 2014 across seven countries.