UPDATE WITH TEXT OF LATEST WHO REPORT

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/137376/1/roadmapsitrep_29Oct2014_eng.pdf

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                                                      Oct. 30, 2014
By CLARENCE ROY-MACAULAY and JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone --Liberia is making some progress in containing the Ebola outbreak while Sierra Leone is "in a crisis situation which is going to get worse," the top anti-Ebola officials in the two countries said.

The people of both countries must redouble efforts to stop the disease, which has infected more than 13,000 people and killed nearly 5,000, the officials said. Their assessments underscore that Ebola remains a constant threat until the outbreak is wiped out. It can appear to be on the wane, only to re-emerge in the same place or balloon elsewhere if people don't avoid touching Ebola patients or the bodies of those who succumb to the disease.

THREE ARTICLES DESCRIBING DETAILS OF THE EBOLA VIRUS AND OTHER VIRUSES.
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Advances in microscopy have allowed scientists like Sriram Subramaniam and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute to look at the workings of tiny viruses. In this case, microscopy was used to illustrate the complex process in which human cells infected with HIV-1, green and blue, are linked to uninfected cells. Credit Illustration by Donald Bliss/N.I.H, from The Journal of Virology/American Society for Microbiology

The research on how the virus spreads is not as ambiguous as some have made it seem

THE ATLANTIC                                                                                                          Oct. 28, 2014

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                      Oct. 29, 2014

By Clarence Roy-Macaulay

USA TODAY                                                                        OCT. 29, 2014
By Doug Staglin
Maine state police were stationed outside the home of Ebola nurse Kaci Hickox Wednesday as Gov. Paul LePage said he was seeking legal authority to force the "unwilling" health care workers to remain quarantined for 21 days.

The 33-year-old nurse, who has shown no symptoms of the deadly virus, arrived in Maine on Monday after being forcibly held in an isolation tent in New Jersey for three days under that state's strict new law for health care workers who have recently treated Ebola patients in West Africa.

Over Hickox's objections, Maine health officials insisted that she stay in her home in Fort Kent for 21 days until the incubation period for Ebola had passed.

"I don't plan on sticking to the guidelines," Hickox tells Today show's Matt Lauer. "I am not going to sit around and be bullied by politicians and forced to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public."

THE GUARDIAN                                                                                Oct. 28, 2014
By Sarah Boseley

West Africa, now in the throes of a calamitous Ebola epidemic, missed out on significant health investment over the past decade or more because it had low rates of HIV, a detailed survey of the changing health of Africa and Asia reveals.

The US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power (centre), visits an ebola emergency response centre in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Healthcare in west Africa now has the world’s attention. Photograph: Reuters

A major project called Indepth, which has looked at the causes of death of more than 110,000 people in 13 countries shows that health improved generally in those given substantial international aid to try to turn around the HIV and Aids epidemic. But west Africa, with severe poverty and low healthcare standards but relatively little HIV, did not benefit.

LEAKED MEMO SAYS STATE DEPARTMENT CONSIDERING TREATING NON-AMERICAN HEALTH WORKERS BUT AN OFFICIAL SAYS DISCUSSIONS WERE SHELVED

THE WASHINGTON TIMES                         Oct. 29, 2014
By Stephen Dinan- The Washington Times - Tuesday, October 28, 2014

WASHINGTON POST                          Oct 28, 2014
By Josh Hicks
When it comes to transporting Ebola victims by air, the world relies on just one small U.S. company.

Phoenix Air has been using the isolation system below this aircraft to transport Ebola patients. (EPA/BRANDEN CAMP)

Y YETNEWS                                        Oct. 27, 2014
Udi Etsion
An Israel icompany has developed and installed in Guinea special inflatable isolation tents to be used to house and isolate Ebola patients.

Special inflatable tent being used to fight Ebola

The inflatable tents have also been purchased for the treatment of Ebola patients by other countries on the continent, according to the Israeli company SYS Technologies, which specializes in the development of clean-air systems and mobile operating theaters. The company said the units can be constructed and shipped within two weels.

The units use a positive pressure technology to create an absolute clear and isolated environment and maintain the structure. The company has also developed an incubator-like stretcher for the safe transfer of patients to the isolation tents.

Read full article
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4584736,00.html

WHITE HOUSE SUPPORTS CDC GUIDELINES FOR CIVILIANS, EXPLAINS DIFFERENT TREATMENT FOR U.S. TROOPS

NEW YORK TIMES                                                              Oct. 28, 2014
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday said that new Ebola guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “sensible, based in science” and would help keep Americans safe while not discouraging volunteers from traveling to West Africa to battle the disease at its source....

In a study for the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of experts had traced the disease to the village in Guéckédou, in southeastern Guinea, by reviewing hospital documents and speaking to those involved.

 Read Complete  story

CDC   WASHINGTON                                                    Oct. 28, 2014

The CDC has released its October report on on the Ebola outbreak in West Affica.

 The updated data in this report were compiled from situation reports from the Guinea Interministerial Committee for Response Against the Ebola Virus and the World Health Organization, the Liberia Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation. Total case counts include all suspected, probable, and confirmed cases as defined by each country. These data reflect reported cases, which make up an unknown proportion of all actual cases and reporting delays that vary from country to country.

Read full report
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm63e1028a1.htm?s_cid=mm63e1028a1_e

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE SITUATION IN A RURAL LIBERIAN HEALTH CLINIC

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                  Oct.28, 2014
By Sheri Fink, MD

SUAKOKO, LIBERIA --
"...What level of care is possible for a disease with no cure being treated in wooden huts in the middle of a forest? How do medical workers prioritize which patients and tasks to focus on when they cannot do everything they were trained to do? Will their decisions determine who lives and who dies? And how would they even know?

Ms. Gaemai Sayon, center, survived Ebola but lost her husband and their infant son to the virus. The child died in her arms while she was delirious from the disease. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

'“You always want to do more, but it has to be balanced with what’s possible, with what makes sense for the context you’re working in,” said Dr. Pranav Shetty, the medical director at the center operated here by International Medical Corps.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                 Oct. 28, 2014
  GENEVA-- The Swiss agency that regulates new drugs said Tuesday it has approved an application for a clinical trial with an experimental Ebola vaccine at the Lausanne University Hospital.

In this picture provided by the World Health Organization, a package of vials of the first shipment of the experimental vaccine VSE-EBOV is opened at the Geneva Cantonal hospital on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014. The World Health Organization (WHO) welcomes the donation by the government of Canada of 800 vials of an experimental candidate vaccine, VSV-EBOV, against Ebola virus disease. Clinical safety trials with this experimental Ebola vaccine have already begun in healthy human volunteers in Mali, the United Kingdom and the United States after showing very promising results in animal research. . (AP Photo/WHO/Mathilde Missioneiro) 

Swissmedic said the trial will be conducted among 120 volunteer participants with support from the U.N. World Health Organization. The experimental vaccine is to be initially administered on healthy volunteers who will be sent as medical staff to fight the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

REUTERS                                          Oct. 28, 2014
By Colleen Jenkins and Doina Chiacu

A Texas nurse who contracted Ebola in the United States will be released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Tuesday after being found free of the virus, the hospital said.

Amber Vinson was one of two nurses at a Dallas hospital who had treated Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian visiting Texas who died of Ebola on Oct. 8 and was the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the United States.

She was admitted to Emory's hospital for treatment on Oct. 15. The other nurse, Nina Pham, also was declared virus-free last week and left the Maryland hospital where she had been treated

UPDATE WITH DETAILS OF MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA MONITORING  (Scroll down)

ROUNDUP OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE QUARANTINE  DISPUTE
NEW YORK TIMES                        Oct. 28, 2014

By SABRINA TAVERNISE, MICHAEL D. SHEAR and HELENE COOPER

The federal government on Monday tried to take charge of an increasingly acrimonious national debate over how to treat people in contact with Ebola patients by announcing guidelines that stopped short of tough measures in New York and New Jersey and were carefully devised, officials said, not to harm the effort to recruit badly needed medical workers to West Africa.