Researchers have revealed in a genetic analysis reported in the New England of Journal of Medicine that a Liberian woman who died in March this year is the first person to contract the Ebola Virus disease via sex. This was transferred to the woman after her male counterpart; an Ebola survivor tested negative for the disease months before. Typically, people contract Ebola from direct contact with the blood or other bodily fluids from a sick or recently deceased patient. Experts have shown that the Ebola virus can linger in patients after they’ve recovered. And they speculated that sexual transmission was possible. New data has suggested that after the virus is cleared from a patient’s blood, it can turn up in semen and other fluids for weeks or months—as long as nine months.
The male’s survivors blood tested negative for the Ebola virus 155 days before the pair had sex. But semen samples taken after the woman fell ill revealed he was still shedding the virus.
Based on Genetic sequencing, It was revealed that that the two were infected with the same viruses, different from other versions of the Ebola virus circulating in Western Africa. This findings have increased possible chances of transmission between the survivor and his partner.
Credit – Arstechnica, WHO
