Mark Kortepeter, M.D. is an infectious disease and public health physician and professor. He has covered Covid-19, bioweapons and infectious disease outbreaks, including plague, measles and listeria. He has particular experience and expertise in bioweapon defense and especially deadly pathogens, such as Ebola virus.
perform a COVID-19 test at a private residence in Goma, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on March 31, 2020. One positive case of COVID-19 coronavirus was reported on March 30, 2020 in Goma, capital of North Kivu Province and a city of more than one million inhabitants, bringing the total for the Democratic Republic of Congo to 98 positive COVID-19 cases including 8 deaths.
Armed with a better picture of the illnesses, health authorities will develop a case definition, which summarizes the key features of the illness. Usually, it is better if these are objective and they often include a time period. For example, a case might be defined “as anyone who became ill from early October or November until now with a fever, cough, and headache.” That is very broad.
Sometimes it can take a while to determine the cause of an outbreak, especially if we are dealing with a new pathogen or one that is hard to isolate in the lab. Regardless, using epidemiology, we can still identify the ways people are infected by looking for patterns in illness transmission.
Currently, we have little information and speculating on the cause may lead us in the wrong direction. As UCLA Professor Anne Rimoin, who has done a lot of work in the DRC, was recentlyas saying, “It could be anything. It could be influenza, it could be Ebola, it could be Marburg, it could be meningitis, it could be measles. At this point, we really just don’t know.”
No doubt we’ll be learning more in the next few days. At that time, it will be easier to make a more informed assessment of what to expect next.Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.
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