Regional health officials in Cameroon today announced that two suspected Marburg cases have been identified, both of whom live in the same community that borders Equatorial Guinea, which declared an outbreak yesterday.
Reuters, quoting a regional health official who took part in a meeting today in Cameroon's capital, said the two suspected case-patients are a boy and a girl, both 16 years old. Neither had traveled to Equatorial Guinea. Authorities have identified 42 of their contacts, and further contact tracing is under way.
Yesterday the World Health Organization (WHO) detailed a Marburg outbreak in Equatorial Guinea, the country's first, with 9 deaths and 16 suspected cases reported. So far, one of eight samples tested in Senegal was positive for Marburg virus, a close relative of Ebola. The virus cases a hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola.
Emergency meeting
The WHO today convened an emergency meeting of its Marburg experts to review possible vaccines and treatments and look at research priorities for Equatorial Guinea's outbreak.
No approved vaccines or treatments exist, but two vaccines are in phase 1 clinical trials. One vaccine is from the Sabin Vaccine Institute and the other from Janssen (Johnson & Johnson).
In West Africa's Ebola outbreak, advanced clinical trials took place for Merck's VSV-EBOV vaccine, which was found to be highly effective. In Uganda's recent Sudan Ebola outbreak, officials had hoped to do similar trials for candidate vaccines against that subtype, but cases declined rapidly before the studies could begin.