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A deadly Ebola-like disease found in Bolivia can spread from person to person, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned Monday.
Known as Chapare virus, the infection causes high fever, abdominal pain, bleeding gums, eye pain, and skin rashes.
Only one case was reported in the Bolivian province for which the disease is named in 2003 after it made the leap from animals – apparently through rodent bites or scratches – to humans.
But now the CDC confirmed at a conference on Monday that it reappeared in 2019 and spread from one patient to four others – and three of the total five cases proved fatal, LiveScience reported.
If this sounds like coronavirus déjà vu, it isn’t, CDC officials say. They note that hemorrhagic fevers such as Chapare and Ebola spread very rarely because they have obvious and immediate symptoms and often, sadly, become fatal before they have a chance to spread.
And most of the people who died in the 2019 outbreak were not casual contacts and untraceable, but healthcare workers who had to interact with the infected person while caring for them.
For the first time, CDC scientists have discovered that the rare Ebola-like Chapare virus can be transmitted between people after a group of five cases, including three deaths, were reported in Bolivia. In the photo: a microscopic image of the Chapare virus
With further confirmed cases of Chapare virus, there have been only six known cases so far.
After the initial case, nearly two decades ago, the virus seemed to disappear.
But last year, a hospital near La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, contacted CDC investigators.
They had had a strange group of diseases and suspected dengue fever, a common disease transmitted by mosquitoes in tropical regions.
Like Ebola, dengue can cause abdominal pain and nausea, pain behind the eyes, aches and pains in the joints and muscles, and if it progresses to a more severe form, life-threatening internal bleeding.
But when Bolivian scientists tested samples from the five patients, they were completely negative for dengue, as well as a whole panel of other infections found in the region, including other hemorrhagic fevers and yellow fever.
The hospital did not have a test – a profile that reacts to a specific pathogen – for Chapare virus, which had only been detected once in humans.
But the CDC did, and each of the five samples contained fragments of the genetic material of the Chapare virus.
And the similarities and changes in the samples suggested they had passed from person to person.
Through their investigations, CDC scientists suspect that the resident doctor who died in the outbreak likely passed the virus to the ambulance doctor who resuscitated her via CPR on the way to the hospital, allowing for transmission of the virus through body fluids.
Rodent droppings found near the home of the late first patient also contained the virus, suggesting the path by which the virus made the leap from animals to humans.
One surviving patient still had detectable levels of Chapare in his sperm, 168 days after taking it.
The results are frightening for two reasons: the virus can be spread from human to human – the mode of transmission that allowed COVID-19 to become a pandemic – and it can persist, at least in traces, for a long time.
So far, four out of six people who have had Chapare have died.
While this makes the virus exponentially more fatal than the coronavirus, it also means the virus has less chance of spreading.
It is also a very symptomatic disease, and symptoms appear almost instantly after infection.
This is the opposite of coronavirus, for which 40% of cases are estimated to be asymptomatic, making it the main nightmare virus of US infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci.
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