DisprovedChanged2020

There is no cure or approved treatment for Ebola

The old claim turned out to be wrong and was rejected by evidence.

TaughtEbola is a near-certain death sentence. Doctors can only offer supportive care (fluids, oxygen, treating whatever else goes wrong) and hope. No drug has ever been approved to treat the virus itself.

NowOn 14 October 2020 the FDA approved Inmazeb, a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies from Regeneron, the first approved treatment for Zaire ebolavirus. A second drug, Ebanga, was approved that December. In the trial that tested them, they roughly halved deaths, and cut them far more when given early.

What actually happened

The evidence came out of an outbreak. During the 2018–2020 epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a randomized trial (PALM) run in the middle of an active outbreak compared four experimental therapies head to head, and was stopped early because two of them were clearly saving lives.

The honest boundaries: these are treatments, not a magic cure, and they work far better the sooner they are given, so getting patients to care early still matters enormously. They also target Zaire ebolavirus specifically, not every species.

But the flat old line, that Ebola has no treatment beyond supportive care, stopped being true in the autumn of 2020.

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