In the shadow of more than 700 deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Oxford University has compressed years of conventional vaccine development into two months, bringing a Bundibugyo Ebola candidate to its first human trial. Fifty volunteers in the United Kingdom now stand at the threshold of a question that carries enormous weight for central Africa: whether science, accelerated by pandemic-era technology, can outpace a virus that has never before faced a vaccine. It is the seventeenth time the DRC has confronted Ebola since 1976, and the urgency of this moment is inseparable from that
UK launches human trials for Bundibugyo Ebola vaccine as DRC outbreak spreads
The Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak has claimed more than 700 lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo since mid-May, with cases and deaths continuing to rise.