THE RETURN OF EBOLA?

Excerpt from this article in the BBC News:

Eleven people have now died in an outbreak of Ebola in central Democratic Republic of Congo, say aid workers.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said one woman died on Sunday, while another man succumbed in Mweka on Christmas Day.

MSF is treating 24 other suspected Ebola cases at isolation units in the villages of Kaluamba and Kampungu.

It is monitoring 102 people who may have had contact with the virus. The latest outbreak in Western Kasai province emerged in late November.

[...]

It is the first Ebola outbreak in Africa since February and the fourth in DR Congo since 1976....

And in the Philippines:

The USDA's Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory has isolated an atypical porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus from swine samples collected from pigs from four farms north of Manila. The pigs exhibited clinical signs similar to those observed in cases of Porcine High Fever Disease in China and Vietnam....

The Plum Island researchers also isolated the Reston-Ebola virus from 6 of the 28 swine samples tested. This marks the first time the Ebola virus has been isolated from swine.

[...]

The Reston-Ebola strain is different from other Ebola subtypes, which are all potentially fatal to humans. The Reston-Ebola strain is of Asian origin and can be aerosol transmitted unlike the Zaire and Uganda strains. Also, the Reston strain has not caused illness in humans who come in contact with infected animals....

So far. But the potential for jumping species always exists.

EBOLA VIRUS IS BACK

Reminiscent of Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, but with more of a cover-up. The complete item in the December 24, 2007 edition of Time:

Ebola's Stealthy Return

IT'S BACK A new strain of Ebola has killed at least 30 people in Uganda, including several health-care workers who failed to take proper safety precautions when some patients did not exhibit such classic, horrific symptoms as bleeding from the eyes and ears. More than 100 people are thought to be infected, with hundreds more being monitored.

DELAYED REACTION? The outbreak began in August but was not confirmed until Nov. 29. Officials in Uganda deny they waited to publicly identify the highly contagious virus until after Queen Elizabeth II and 53 other heads of state had met in the capital, Kampala, on Nov. 23 for a Commonwealth summit.