Skip to main content
. 2016 Oct 4;214(Suppl 3):S110–S121. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiw239

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Diagnosis of the first case of Ebola virus (EBOV) disease (EVD) and changes in caseload and case numbers over time. A, Time line of events at Kenema Government Hospital (KGH) following the introduction of EBOV into Sierra Leone. Images from left to right are a colorized version of a electron micrograph of EBOV, taken by F. Murphy (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention); (2) a photograph of a team from the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium (VHFC; from left to right, Simbirie Jalloh [program manager], Mambu Momoh [laboratory technician], Dr S. Humarr Khan [director, Lassa fever program], Dr Kristian Andersen [then in the laboratory of Pardis Sabeti at Harvard/Broad and currently at the Scripps Research Institute], and Stephen Gire [then in the laboratory of Pardis Sabeti and currently at NextGen Jane) assists in establishing diagnostic capability for EBOV at KGH following the declaration of an EVD outbreak in nearby Guinea; cropped photograph of healer [17]. B, Diagnosis of first EVD case in Sierra Leone by Augustine Goba on 25 March 2014. An asterisk indicates the location of the 122–base pair positive band, using a VHFC-designed polymerase chain reaction assay (performed by K. Andersen, using KGH primers) [14]. Other primers include the Baize et al [3] modification of the Filo A/B [15] primer set for EBOV detection (285–base pair control band; white square, negative for sample) and the Ölschläger et al [4] modification of the Demby et al primer set [5] for Lassa virus (LASV) detection (318–base pair control band; white circle, negative for sample). There is 1 mismatch in the forward primer and 1 mismatch in the reverse primer, compared with the EM095 sequence (accession number KM034550) [14], which may explain why the modified FiloA/B primer set failed to amplify this sequence. EM095 is also referred to as case 2. Case 1 presented to KGH on 23 March 2014 but received a diagnosed of EVD after case 2 tested positive. C, Cumulative numbers of EVD cases admitted to KGH from 25 May to 18 June 2014. These cases were the basis of the genomic sequencing article by Gire et al [14] and the clinical study by Schieffelin et al [16]. D, Numbers of EVD cases diagnosed per month in Kenema District and in Sierra Leone between 25 May 2014 and 17 February 2016.