Infectious disease experts: Why the risk of Ebola entering the US is extremely low. [View all]

[pnwmom]

Some people have been wondering if we already have Ebola in the US. Experts say that is extremely unlikely.

http://www.newsweek.com/taxis-planes-and-viruses-how-deadly-ebola-can-spread-262486

The risk of the Ebola virus making its way out of Africa into Europe, Asia or the Americas is extremely low, according to infectious disease specialists, partly due to the severity of the disease and its deadly nature.

Patients are at the most dangerous when Ebola haemorrhagic fever is in its terminal stages, inducing both internal and external bleeding, and profuse vomiting and diarrhoea - all of which contain high concentrations of infectious virus.

Anyone at this stage of the illness is close to death, and probably also too ill to travel, said Bruce Hirsch, an infectious diseases expert at North Shore University Hospital in the United States.

"It is possible, of course, for a person to think he might just be coming down with the flu, and to get onto transport and then develop more critical illness. That's one of the things we are concerned about," he said in a telephone interview.

He added, however: "The risk (of Ebola spreading to Europe or the United States) is not zero, but it is very small."

SNIP