This correction is ours. On our wire this week we carried a brief reading: "Uganda declares itself Ebola-free after 20 cases and no deaths, against a strain with no vaccine." Two of those facts are wrong, and the people they are wrong about deserve the record straightened first.
The deaths. Uganda's outbreak killed two people. Both were among the imported cases, and the World Health Organization's outbreak notice also records a probable case who died. [1][2] The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control's July 31 update states it plainly: Uganda had "20 confirmed cases, including two deaths." [3] Our brief said none. The most likely origin of the error is a real and important fact sitting next to it, which is that Uganda recorded no community transmission at all: every case traced back to importation or a known contact, and the virus never got loose in the general population. [1] That is what should have been written.
The strain. This was Bundibugyo virus, not the Sudan or Zaire strains that dominate Ebola coverage. [1][2] The "no vaccine" half of our brief happens to survive, and for a sharper reason than we knew: the licensed Ebola vaccines and therapeutics work against Zaire ebolavirus, and WHO states directly that "no approved vaccines or specific treatments currently exist for BVD." [1] Uganda contained this outbreak with surveillance, contact tracing and isolation. There was nothing to inject.
What we got right, and what we underplayed: 20 confirmed cases, 15 imported from the Democratic Republic of Congo and 5 secondary, an outbreak declared over on July 28. [1] Against a strain with no medical countermeasures, holding the total to twenty and keeping community transmission at zero is a substantial public-health achievement. Our error made it look easier than it was.
One date we cannot resolve and therefore will not assert: WHO's account of when the last patient was discharged and the 42-day countdown ran does not reconcile cleanly with other reporting of the same milestone. Uganda declared the outbreak over on July 28; we leave the countdown arithmetic to the health ministry that ran it.
The necessary context our celebratory brief lacked: the outbreak next door is not over. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the same Bundibugyo virus has produced 3,442 confirmed cases and 1,521 deaths as of the end of July, with 49 of 140 health zones affected and the epidemic still growing. [3] Uganda's case fatality rate was 2 in 20. The DRC's is 1,521 in 3,442, about 44 percent.
The difference between those two numbers is not luck. It is whether an outbreak is caught at the border or fought inside a conflict zone. We should have printed both, correctly, the first time.
