News Scan for Apr 27, 2022

DRC launches vaccine campaign in new Ebola outbreak areaFollowing the reappearance of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC's) Equateur Province, the country today launched an rVSV-EBOV vaccine campaign, tapping an initial shipment of 200 doses, the World Health Organization (WHO) African regional office said today.The campaign will use a "ring vaccination" strategy, targeting contacts and contact of contacts and also include health providers and other frontline workers.The outbreak total in the province's capital city Mbandaka stands at two fatal cases.

So far, 233 contacts have been identified for monitoring.Outbreak responders have also set up a 20-bed Ebola treatment center in the city.

A completed analysis of a sample from the first confirmed case conducted by the DRC's National Institute for Biomedical Research shows that the outbreak was triggered by a new spillover from the host or animal reservoir.

The outbreak marks the DRC's 14th since 1976, including three from Equateur Province since 2018.Apr 27 WHO African regional office statementThird dose of mRNA vaccines highly protective against Omicron deathsA new study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases shows a third dose of Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines were 89.6% to 78.8% protective against deaths during the Omicron surge compared to no vaccination.The study adds to a growing body of literature which suggests booster does can raise antibody levels to fight circulating strains, despite being formulated to fight the original strain of SARS-CoV-2.To conduct the study, researchers matched 221,267 Pfizer third-dose recipients and 187,507 Moderna third-dose recipients to equal numbers of primary series vaccinated people and unvaccinated people,