Short answers, pulled from the story.
The average mortality rate of Ebola virus disease is approximately 50%. Outbreaks have ranged from 25% to 90% mortality, with the highest recorded death rate of 90% occurring during the 2002-2003 Republic of the Congo outbreak.
Ebola was first identified in 1976 during two simultaneous outbreaks: one in Nzara, South Sudan, beginning in June 1976, and another in Yambuku, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), beginning on the 26th of August 1976. The disease was named after the Ebola River, near the Yambuku outbreak site.
Congolese doctor Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum was one of the discoverers of Ebola and the first scientist to survive direct contact with the disease. He collected a blood sample from a Belgian nun that researcher Peter Piot later used to identify the previously unknown virus. Piot co-discovered Ebola as part of a CDC team that came to assess the 1976 Zaire outbreak.
Ebola spreads between people only through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of someone who is showing symptoms. Body fluids that can carry the virus include blood, vomit, feces, saliva, urine, semen, breast milk, sweat, mucus, and tears. Airborne transmission between humans has not been documented in any Ebola outbreak.
Yes. The vaccine rVSV-ZEBOV was approved by the US FDA in December 2019 and appears to be fully effective ten days after administration. It was studied in Guinea between 2014 and 2016, and by the time of the Kivu Ebola epidemic from 2018 to 2020, approximately 345,000 people had received the vaccine.
A large portion of Ebola survivors develop post-Ebola virus syndrome, which can include joint and muscle pain, liver inflammation, hearing loss, vision problems including light sensitivity and vision loss, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and menstrual abnormalities. Survivors are advised to wear condoms for at least twelve months after infection, and the virus can persist in semen for more than a year after recovery.