WINNIPEG, Manitoba, Nov. 9 (UPI) — A National Center for Foreign Animal Disease employee in Winnipeg, Canada, is under a 21-day quarantine after possible Ebola virus exposure.
The employee was working with pigs that had been exposed to the virus for an experiment. The employee was wearing a protective suit but noticed a split in a seam during standard decontamination procedures. The person, who has not been identified, will be in isolation for 21 days, the standard incubation period for the virus.
Officials said the employee was offered a Canadian-developed experimental Ebola vaccine. It is unclear if the person took the vaccine.
“The Ebola vaccine offered to the employee was developed by scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory and donated for the Ebola response in West Africa in 2014,” a Public Health Agency spokeswoman said. “The vaccine is currently approved for use in clinical trials and under specific circumstances.”
The national lab works on animal disease prevention, detection and mitigation including avian influenza, foot-and-mouth disease and classical swine fever. Six pigs were infected with Ebola to determine if interferons, which are proteins released by animal cells in response to a virus, would inhibit the disease.
An Ebola epidemic killed some 11,000 people in West Africa beginning in 2014.
