Grant: Operating Grant - Innovative Ebola Research Grants

The Zaire ebolavirus (ZEBOV), a member of the filoviridae, has caused lethal sporadic epidemics of hemorrhagic fever in equatorial Africa since isolation of the virus in 1976. Recently a large ZEBOV outbreak in Western Africa has caused severe morbidity and mortality. The international community has mustered a strong response to aid the greatly inflicted countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The scale of the current epidemic has increased the need for understanding environmental persistence of the virus and the effectiveness of current decontamination and infection control protocols. These three topics require additional investigation due to a lack of knowledge in the field of filovirus environmental biology and their relation to the transmission of the virus in nosocomial and communal settings. Our research focuses on providing up to date quantitative evidence for the environmental persistence and disinfection of the Ebola virus. To address this topic we propose a set of three experiments: 1) determination of the Ebola Virus' environmental persistence, 2) testing the efficacy of commonly used disinfectants against the virus and 3) evaluating the degree of protection personal protective equipment (PPE) affords to the wearer. All three of these experiments depend on a published methodology named, "quantitative carrier test-two" which was designed to detect and quantify the survival of biological agents suspended in liquid medium on a solid surface. Importantly, the procedure allows for the testing of Ebola virus survival and disinfection on any surface making evaluation of PPE possible.