Marburg virus disease is a rare but very infectious hemorrhagic fever spread to humans by fruit bats and transmitted among people through direct contact with bodily fluids of infected people and surfaces.
The World Health Organization hopes to test an experimental Marburg vaccine in Equatorial Guinea, which announced its first outbreak of the virus Monday.
Nine deaths have been confirmed, while 16 suspected patients are in quarantine. Health officials are also monitoring 15 asymptomatic close contacts of infected people.
No vaccine or antiviral treatment is approved to treat Marburg virus disease, which has an average death rate of around 50%, according to the WHO.
On Tuesday, the WHO convened an urgent meeting to evaluate several possible vaccine candidates that could be administered during the outbreak. The meeting brought together a consortium of vaccine developers, researchers and government officials — a group the WHO created in 2021 to advance a Marburg vaccine.
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Marburg belongs to the same family of viruses as Ebola, so the diseases can look similar. Both are characterized by viral hemorrhagic fever, a condition that can cause internal bleeding and damage multiple organ systems.
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