The Ebola Outbreak Monitor tracks international news coverage of Ebola virus disease (EVD) and related hemorrhagic fever viruses in real time, applying automated sentiment analysis to provide a structured daily assessment.
Each day, the system scans RSS feeds from major international news outlets and dedicated public health sources. Articles are filtered for Ebola-related keywords, then scored and classified based on the language used in their headlines and summaries.
Scores are aggregated across all sources to produce an overall daily assessment. This assessment is stored and displayed in the historical record, allowing you to track trends over time.
| Category | Meaning | Typical Signals |
|---|---|---|
| BAD | Active concern: outbreak signals, fatalities, or emergency language detected | Deaths, outbreak declared, spreading, human-to-human transmission, emergency |
| NEUTRAL | Watchful: monitoring, containment efforts, or cautionary reporting | Surveillance, cases reported, containment underway, warnings issued |
| NON-ISSUE | Low concern: historical, educational, or reassuring coverage | Research, no new cases, outbreak declared over, contained, rare/isolated |
The Guardian is also monitored for global health reporting. All feeds are public RSS sources and are not cached or stored beyond the article metadata needed for scoring.
The Threat Index (1–10) is a numeric representation of the aggregate sentiment score. A score of 1 indicates minimal or no outbreak signals. A score of 10 represents extreme alarm across multiple credible sources. The index is updated each time a refresh is performed.
Ebola virus disease, caused by Ebola virus (formerly Zaire ebolavirus) and related filoviruses, is one of the world's most severe hemorrhagic fevers, with case fatality rates historically ranging from 25% to 90%. First identified in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, outbreaks have occurred primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.
The largest outbreak in history occurred in West Africa from 2013–2016, infecting more than 28,000 people and killing over 11,000. Effective vaccines and treatments now exist, including the rVSV-ZEBOV (Ervebo) vaccine. The WHO and Africa CDC maintain active surveillance programs.