Ebola on Both Your Houses!

A.k.a. Disease X?

“Denver Health medical team receives Ebola vaccine” (9News, 2023.11.23)

DENVER — A few medical employees at Denver Health made history Monday as some of the first people to receive the live Ebola vaccine for preventative measures, the hospital said. "Even though there are no current outbreaks in the world, we want to make sure that people have the chance to be protected in case we need to take care of a patient that has a disease with a mortality potentially of 70%," Dr. Maria Frank, a recipient of the vaccine, said.

“Denver Health administers 1st shots of Ebola vaccines” (Becker’s Hospital Review, 2023.11.29):

It is unclear how long the vaccines provide immunity, but at the moment the dosage is just one shot, Maria Frank, MD, a hospital medicine specialist with Denver Health, told 9News. She was one of the first recipients of the vaccine, which at this time is only available to frontline workers at high risk of contracting the disease.

As luck would have it, FDA approved the jab on Dec. 19, 2019. “First FDA-approved vaccine for the prevention of Ebola virus disease, marking a critical milestone in public health preparedness and response”:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today the approval of Ervebo, the first FDA-approved vaccine for the prevention of Ebola virus disease (EVD), caused by Zaire ebolavirus in individuals 18 years of age and older.

“Ebola virus disease is a rare but severe and often deadly disease that knows no borders. Vaccination is essential to help prevent outbreaks and to stop the Ebola virus from spreading when outbreaks do occur,” said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

Ervebo is administered as a single-dose injection, and is a live, attenuated vaccine that has been genetically engineered to contain a protein from the Zaire ebolavirus.

“Ebola Vaccine: Information about ERVEBO®” (CDC):

ERVEBO is a replication-competent, live, attenuated recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) vaccine manufactured by Merck. It is not possible to become infected with EBOV from the vaccine because the vaccine only contains a gene from the Ebola virus, not the whole virus.

The gene? The gene:

Specifically, it includes a gene for the EBOV glycoprotein that replaces the gene for the native VSV glycoprotein, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Ah, that EBOV glycoprotein! “Ebolavirus glycoprotein structure and mechanism of entry” (Future Virol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 Mar 1.):

The EBOV glycoprotein (GP) is the only virally expressed protein on the virion surface and is critical for attachment to host cells and catalysis of membrane fusion.

So, just like the SARS-CoV-2 S spike? What a relief! Let’s hope this live attenuated virus becomes unattenuated soon, just like the live attenuated polio vaccine viruses do (“How the Polio Vaccine Virus Occasionally Becomes Dangerous”, Michigan Medicine, 2020.11.17), so we can all partake in this advancement of $cience:

In a new paper, Adam Lauring, M.D., Ph.D., of the department of microbiology & immunology and the division of infectious disease and a collaborative team describe an enterprising study that allowed them to view the evolution of the vaccine virus into a more dangerous form in real time. "Most outbreaks of type 2 polio virus are caused by the vaccine. Then you have a problem where our best weapon is that same vaccine, so you're kind of fighting fire with fire," says Lauring.

We have nothing to fear at the sure hands of FDA and CDC! Do we?