Deadly Virus Prompts Team’s Visit To Liberia Strain Appears Less Serious Than One That Killed 244 In Zaire

Experts trying to contain an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia are investigating reports of deaths in a second location, a World Health Organization spokesman said Tuesday.

The five-member team returned Tuesday to the Liberian village of Plibo, home of a man diagnosed with Ebola last week.

They then went to River Bay, a town about 60 miles to the north, to check reports that 10 to 15 people had died of Ebola-like symptoms - diarrhea, fever and massive hemorrhaging, said WHO spokesman Richard Leclair.

During a visit to Plibo on Sunday, the team found four more suspected cases of the disease in the stricken man’s home. Jaster Chea, 25, has been hospitalized across the border in Gozon, Ivory Coast.

The latest strain of Ebola appears to be less virulent than the one that killed 244 people in Kikwit, Zaire, earlier this year. Liberia and the Ivory Coast, on Africa’s west coast, are more than 1,500 miles from Zaire.

The Zaire strain was fatal to 80 percent of afflicted people, but so far no one has died from the latest outbreak, Leclair said.

“It doesn’t seem to be as dangerous as the Kikwit epidemic because there is not as much hemorrhaging,” Leclair said. “It may not be the same type of Ebola as in Kikwit.”

The Paris-headquartered Institut Pasteur is comparing the strains and is expected to announce its conclusions later this week, he said.

Leclair said some members of the U.N. agency team also want to go to the nearby Liberian coastal town of Harper to check out reports of a cholera outbreak.