Read and report vaccine reactions, harassment and failures.
Ebola virus is contagious and is spread through inhalation, ingestion and/or passage through breaks in the skin when an uninfected person comes in contact with the body fluids (blood, saliva, nasal secretions, stool, vomit, breastmilk, semen, urine, tears) of an infected person or the cadaver of a person who died from Ebola. Ebola is also spread when a person comes in contact with bandages, clothes, or other objects that have been contaminated with body fluids, especially blood, of an infected person.
Depending upon the body fluid, Ebola virus has been detected in body fluids from six to 40 days after disease onset, including during the convalescent stage. A small percentage of persons who recover from Ebola have been found to have the virus present in bodily fluids for longer than nine months.
Ebola can also be spread through sexual contact, and men who recover from the disease are advised to practice safe sex for at least one year after the onset of symptoms or until their semen has tested negative for Ebola virus on two separate occasions.
After coming in contact with someone infected with Ebola, the incubation period from initial exposure to onset of acute disease symptoms is between 2 and 21 days, with an average of 8 to 10 days.
There is some evidence that Ebola may be spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes into the air, but there is disagreement among scientists and public health officials on whether airborne transmission does occur. A person with Ebola virus is only contagious to others after they begin to show signs of illness.
Those who recover from Ebola virus infection may develop antibodies lasting 10 years or longer, but it is not known if they can become immune for life or if they are susceptible to infection from different strains of Ebola virus. A person remains infectious until the virus is no longer found in their blood.
In certain instances, persons who recover from Ebola can harbor the virus for several years, and even spread it on to others. In 2016, researchers discovered that an Ebola survivor transmitted the virus through sexual contact approximately 470 days after exhibiting symptoms of the disease. This transmission was linked to several cases in Liberia and Guinea.
Scientists investigating the 2021 Ebola virus outbreak in Guinea discovered that the source of the outbreak was likely a survivor of the 2014-2016 West Africa Outbreak. This hypothesis was reached after a genetic analysis revealed that the virus sequence from this outbreak was closely related to the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola virus strain.