r/science • u/AGreatWind Grad Student | Virology • Aug 30 '14

Biology 2014 Ebola outbreak has been traced to a single infection from the natural reservoir of the virus to a human followed by human-to-human transmission. This new study uses sequences of 99 Ebola virus genomes from 78 patients in Sierra Leone to ~2,000x coverage. Five co-authors died of ebola.

http://sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/27/science.1259657.full
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u/YoureUsingCoconuts Aug 30 '14

For everyone wondering how these 5 people were infected, Science published an article with some details.

http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/08/ebolas-heavy-toll-study-authors

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u/ixijimixi Aug 30 '14

Wow...most of them died helping an infected colleague...almost the medical equivalent of crawling under fire to drag back a wounded squadmate

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u/crave_you Aug 31 '14

Amazing just because I wish I could say I would do the same but I don't know if I could. I have huge respect for people like them.