Genotypic anomaly in ebola virus strains circulating in magazine wharf Area, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 2015

Abstract

The Magazine Wharf area, Freetown, Sierra Leone was a focus of ongoing Ebola virus transmission from late June 2015. Viral genomes linked to this area contain a series of 13 T to C substitutions in a 150 base pair intergenic region downstream of viral protein 40 open reading frame, similar to the Ebolavirus/H.sapienswt/ SLE/2014/Makona-J0169 strain (J0169) detected in the same town in November 2014. This suggests that recently circulating viruses from Freetown descend from a J0169-like virus.