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For the first time, scientists have detected Marburg virus in bats in West Africa. Earlier this month (December 20), they reported that five Egyptian rousette fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) sampled from three locations in Sierra Leone tested positive for the virus. No humans have been infected there, but the discovery is a warning for the community that the virus, an Ebola relative that is also highly deadly to humans, is present.
“We have known for a long time that rousette bats, which carry Marburg virus in other parts of Africa, also live in West Africa. So it’s not surprising that we’d find the virus in bats there,” Jonathan Towner, an ecologist who led a team from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says in a press release.
The discovery was part of surveillance programs by the CDC and PREDICT-USAID, led by the ...
