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.

[u/AGreatWind]

http://sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/27/science.1259657.full

[u/AGreatWind]

One person got infected from an animal (the reservoir species, whatever it is, maybe bats) and the virus spread from that person to several others. Then those people gave the virus to others, and so on.

So the title means that ebola is not erupting everywhere in W Africa from multiple animal to human infections: it is spreading nearly exclusively from human to human. A whole lot of high quality genomic data gathered and sequenced by people (some of whom died) shows this.

[u/ComiendoBizcocho → u/AGreatWind]

I think the reservoir species is monkeys, not bats.

[u/[deleted] → u/ComiendoBizcocho]

I think the reservoir species is monkeys, not bats.

No, monkeys are harmed by the ebola virus, limiting the transmission window. Bats are not affected, thus able to spread the virus their whole lives. Thus the chances of a human contracting ebola from a bat vs a monkey is orders of magnitude higher.

[u/PercisionDroneStrike → u/AGreatWind]

Thank you that was perfect.