Description of the situation
17 April 1996
Disease Outbreak Reported
Reston virus, a filovirus closely related to Ebola virus has been isolated from two non- human primates (Cynomolgus) held at a quarantine facility in Texas, USA. One animal was dead and the other sick when sampled. The monkeys had been imported from the Philippines. At present there is no indication of associated human disease. A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conducting further investigations on site.
Reston virus was first discovered in 1989 in monkeys imported from the Philippines which had died in a holding facility in Reston, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. , USA. While monkeys suffer a severe disease often leading to death, the limited information available indicates that humans may not become clinically ill. However, this is based only on the isolation of Reston virus from one asymptomatically infected animal handler identified during the original outbreak and a few seroconversions that were not associated with clinical disease.
A formal quarantine procedure for imported monkeys was developed following the original Reston episode and it is this system that apparently identified the current cases.