WASHINGTON — It’s incredibly unlikely that Ebola would mutate to spread through the air, and the best way to make sure it doesn’t is to stop the epidemic, a top government scientist told lawmakers Wednesday.

“A virus that doesn’t replicate, doesn’t mutate,” Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee.

6370Doctors expect Nebraska Ebola patient to recover

OMAHA, Neb. — An American aid worker infected with Ebola who’s being treated in Nebraska is now expected to make a full recovery, his doctors said Wednesday.

The medical team treating Rick Sacra also said it’s optimistic that the 51-year-old from Worcester, Massachusetts, will soon be able to leave the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

“However, we are still somewhat cautious because of the severity and unknown factors of this disease,” said Dr. Angela Hewlett, associate medical director of the isolation unit housing Sacra, who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia. “We know from experience how other patients look as their condition improves, but since we have so little experience treating patients with Ebola, that tempers our optimism a little bit.”

The unit’s medical director, Dr. Phil Smith, said an initial set of blood samples from Sacra sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed a decreased amount of the virus in his blood over his first five days of treatment. Doctors are now awaiting results of a second set of blood samples.

“For Dr. Sacra to be discharged, there has to be two negative blood tests done 24 hours apart,” Hewlett said. “If the second set of blood samples continues to trend in the same way the first set did, we’ll be able to administer those tests fairly soon.”

Sacra, who’s been hospitalized in Omaha since Sept. 5, received an experimental drug for seven days, but is no longer receiving that treatment, the hospital said in a written release. Sacra also was given blood from a fellow doctor who battled the disease and recovered.

His wife, Debbie, and the medical team treating him have offered daily updates that seemed to show his condition steadily improving since he was wheeled into the hospital on a gurney.

“He looks great in person,” Smith said. “We’re hopeful the latest round of lab data reflects what we’re seeing in his room.”

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is believed to have sickened nearly 5,000 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The deadly virus also has reached Nigeria and Senegal. It has killed at least 2,400 people.

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he will order 3,000 U.S. military personnel to West Africa to try to help stem the spread, which occurs through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients. The U.S. is also planning on delivering 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each to Liberia.

Fauci said U.S. researchers are monitoring for mutations in the virus, which has killed at least 2,400 people.

But considering all the dire things to worry about with this out-of-control epidemic in West Africa, that mutation concern is not “something I would put at the very top of the radar screen,” said Fauci, head of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The unprecedented Ebola outbreak is believed to have sickened nearly 5,000 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The virus also has reached Nigeria and Senegal.

Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of sick patients. But as the epidemic has grown, so have questions about whether, if left unchecked, the virus might transform and become more contagious.

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Viruses certainly mutate all the time, making mistakes as they copy themselves in order to grow and spread, Fauci explained. Most of those mutations are irrelevant, not associated with any biological change.

But sometimes, those mutations can make a virus a little more or a little less virulent, or make it a little more or a little less efficient at spreading in whatever way it normally is transmitted, he said.

“Very, very rarely does it completely change the way it’s transmitted,” Fauci said, but stressing that he’s not saying it’s impossible.

Last month Boston’s Broad Institute reported a more rapid rate of mutations than expected at that point in the outbreak, but didn’t note anything of special concern.

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