Ebola Virus Networks in the News: Transmission Dynamics during the West African Outbreak

The purpose of this study is to discover the exposure and network patterns during the 2013-2015 Ebola Virus Disease epidemic. The author accomplished this by taking an opportunistic sample of news and academic articles, some of which may also capture cases untreated and therefore unrecorded by hospitals and treatment units. Most of the 315 cases came from the Washington Post, New York Times, and World Health Organization, and they consistently captured between 1-2% of WHO case numbers. The results show that of cases with known exposures, 53.6% became infected through contact with sick family members. Hospital and funeral transmission accounted for the second and third most frequent exposure scenarios at 24.6% and 12.9% respectively. The exposures over time imply that hospital and funeral transmission prevention efforts have been successful, but family transmission has remained common throughout the outbreak. Prevention initiatives should focus on families earlier in epidemics to help control EVD's spread.