Ebola vaccines were put to the test in the DRC

Abstract

An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) could have been much more deadly, public health experts say, if not for an experimental vaccine used to treat hundreds of thousands of people. The efficacy data from the vaccine, called Ervebo, helped European regulators decide in November to make it the first approved Ebola vaccine on the market. Health-care workers began administering Ervebo in August 2018. The single-dose, live vaccine consists of vesicular stomatitis virus engineered to express an Ebola protein. It is more than 90% successful in preventing new infections, according to the World Health Organization. The vaccine was created by Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory, developed by NewLink Genetics, and licensed by Merck & Co. More than 223,000 people in the DRC have received the Merck vaccine, despite political instability, medical mistrust, and even violence against health-care workers. About 2,200 people have died of infection. The success