Ebola Could Spread Through Air-Experts Warn

Medical experts have warned that the notion that Ebola is not spread through air is misleading. They warned that the possibility of the deadly disease being spread through air could not be ruled out as Ebola continues to ravage West Africa and some other parts of the world

According to virus expert Charles L. Bailey, who in 1989 helped the American government tackle an outbreak of Ebola among rhesus monkeys being used for research, told the LA Times:

“We know for a fact that the virus occurs in sputum and no one has ever done a study [disproving that] coughing or sneezing is a viable means of transmitting.

“Unqualified assurances that Ebola is not spread through the air are "misleading",” Bailey said.

Speaking in the same vein to the paper, Dr C J Peters, who has undertaken research into Ebola for America's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told the paper: “We just don't have the data to exclude it [becoming airborne].”

Meanwhile virologist Dr Philip K Russell, a former head of the U.S Army's Medical Research and Development Command, told the paper: 'I see the reasons to dampen down public fears. But scientifically, we're in the middle of the first experiment of multiple, serial passages of Ebola virus in man.... God knows what this virus is going to look like. I don't.'

In September, Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, writing in the New York Times, said experts who believe that Ebola could become airborne are loathed to discuss their concerns in public, for fear of whipping up hysteria.

Discussing the possible future course of the current outbreak, he said: “The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air.”

The disease has already killed more than 3,800 people already.