Ebola experimental vaccine is highly effective, trial shows

There was no cure.

Four vaccinated people came down with Ebola, but in all cases the timing suggests they had been infected beforehand. Almost 30,000 were infected. Kieny, who is also the study’s lead author, added that the new vaccine would protect humans from the next outbreak arguing that the world can not afford the “confusion and human disaster” that brought the last epidemic.

Almost 6,000 people received the vaccine and all were free of the virus 10 days later.

Now, no vaccine – or drug for that matter – is flawless.

However, he said the vaccine would need to be tested by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control before it could be used in Nigeria, if need be. So it is likely to decrease as the vaccine is used over time. That’s 100 percent effectiveness – though it’s hard to predict how many subjects were directly exposed.

Researchers have made many attempts to create an Ebola vaccine since the disease first appeared in Zaire in 1976. The epidemic in 2014, which affected almost 30,000 people and took more than 11,000 lives, has provided governments, businesses and scientific institutions the necessary push to complete an effective vaccine. Vaccinated participants received regular follow-ups for 84 days.

Although fears related to Ebola have slowly lessened for most USA consumers, the disease still affects the global community to this day. They got the vaccine right away or three weeks later. No one got sick. The clinical study of the vaccine was led by the World Health Organization (WHO). “So we may have a vaccine which is registered in 2018”, explained Kieny. Researchers still don’t know whether the vaccine is long-lasting, he said, asking, “Is it still protective, for example, 2-3 years after the vaccination?” “That’s very important to learn”. The researchers wrote that the results showed that the vaccine offers “substantial protection” against the virus. The doses were manufactured in case there is another outbreak.

GAVI, the global vaccine alliance, has promised $5 million for this stockpile.

Vaccines typically take years, even a decade to test. The first results were so promising, however, that the trial’s design was changed so everyone could access the vaccine immediately, including children.

“It’s been a pretty tremendous experience”, Gupta says. The vaccine is “a step in the right direction but not the ultimate solution”, Dr. Gary J. Nabel, a chief scientific officer at the Sanofi pharmaceutical company, told the paper.