The Washington Post - 13.08.2019

A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 13 , 2019

BY WILL ENGLUND

moscow — As funerals were held

Monday for five nuclear workers

killed while testing a new missile,

Russian officials said they will try

to determine what went wrong

and how to avoid another such

accident in the future.

The weapon prototype they

were testing relies on small-scale

power sources being developed by

the Russian Federal Nuclear Cen-

ter that use “radioactive materi-

als, including fissile and radioiso-

tope materials,” the scientific di-

rector of the center, Vyacheslav

Soloviev, said in a video broadcast

by a television station in Sarov,

where the research institute is

based.

“We’re analyzing the whole

chain of events to assess both the

scale of the accident and to under-

stand its causes,” Soloviev said.

The missile exploded Thursday

evening in the Arkhangelsk re-

gion in Russia’s far north. Three

nuclear workers who were in-

jured have been hospitalized in

Moscow.

The explosion of liquid rocket

fuel, on a platform in Dvinsky Bay,

threw several of those who died

into the water, reported the Rus-

sian nuclear agency, Rosatom. A

“short-term” spike in radiation

levels was reported Friday by offi-

cials in the city of Severodvinsk,

near the testing site, but that

report was removed from the Web

later that day. Dvinsky Bay al-

ready had been closed to shipping

ahead of the missile test, and it

will remain so until Sept. 10.

The Serebryanka, a nuclear

fuel cargo ship, has been at the

test site since last week, according

to several reports. Nuclear ex-

perts have speculated that it may

be recovering radioactive debris

from the bottom of the bay.

American and independent

Russian observers have suggested

that the weapon being tested

could have been a nuclear-

powered cruise missile, which

President Vladimir Putin boasted

about last year. The Americans

call it the SSC-X-9 Skyfall; Russia

has named it the 9M730 Burevest-

nik. Such a missile, if successfully

developed, could fly intricate

courses and stay in the air for

many hours as it hunted a target.

President Trump tweeted Mon-

day that the United States is

“learning much from the failed

missile explosion. We have simi-

lar, though more advanced, tech-

nology.”

Also Monday, Valentin Kostyu-

kov, director of the center in Sa-

rov, said on local television that

researchers from the institute had

been working at the northern test

site for a year. Rosatom’s chief,

Alexei Likhachev, said work on

the new weapon would continue,

without specifying what that

weapon is.

Sarov, a closed town about 250

miles east of Moscow that has

been a center of nuclear research

since 1946, was rocked by news of

the accident in the far north.

Sergei Kirienko, first deputy

chief of staff to Putin, attended the

funeral, as did the governor of the

region and the chiefs of the nu-

clear program. Kirienko said the

dead workers would be given

posthumous state awards.

“There’s a brotherhood” at the

institute, said Alexander Cherni-

shev, deputy scientific director of

the center. In planning for the

risks associated with the missile

tests, he said, “I must say, what

happened was not foreseen.”

Speaking at the outdoor funer-

al, Kirienko said: “They took a

double responsibility: In addition

to developing unique technol-

ogies and unique products, they

took the physical risk of conduct-

ing the tests, in which, unfortu-

nately, no matter how much you

calculate in advance, no matter

how much you prepare, it is im-

possible to eliminate the risk

100 percent. They as professionals

knew this very well, but they took

this risk, understanding that no

one could do it better than them.”

Last month, a top-secret Rus-

sian nuclear submersible was

badly damaged in a fire while in

the Barents Sea, killing 14 high-

ranking naval officers. The Kom-

mersant newspaper reported that

a lithium-ion battery may have

sparked a fire on the vessel.

Monday also marked the

19th anniversary of the sinking of

the Kursk, a Russian nuclear-

powered submarine. All 118 per-

sonnel aboard died after the ves-

sel settled on the bottom.

will.englund@washpost.com

Russia mourns 5 killed

working on new missile

BY CLAIRE PARKER

Two experimental Ebola treat-
ments significantly increase sur-
vival rates for those infected with
a disease often considered a
death sentence, scientists an-
nounced Monday, providing
fresh hope for containing an out-
break that has ravaged eastern
Congo.
The drugs, tested in a nearly
nine-month clinical trial, have
performed so well that health
professionals will now adminis-
ter them to every patient in
Congo.
“It’s the first example that a
therapeutic intervention can
have a dramatic effect on de-
creasing the mortality of the
Ebola virus disease,” Anthony S.
Fauci, director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infec-
tious Diseases, said in an inter-
view.
Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tam-
fum, a Congolese doctor who has
spent his career researching
Ebola treatments and oversaw
the trial on the ground, said in a
conference call Monday that he
“could not have imagined” that
such a day would come.
“From now on, we will no
longer say that Ebola is incur-
able,” he said.
But in a place where suspicion
of health workers and violent
conflict are widespread, finding
effective medical therapies is
only half the battle, experts say.
The outbreak — the world’s
second-worst — has infected
nearly 2,800 people and killed
nearly 1,900 since it began a year
ago. The World Health Organiza-
tion designated it a “public health
emergency of international con-
cern” last month.
The new therapies were tested
in a multi-drug, randomized,
controlled trial conducted on the
front lines of the Ebola outbreak
since November. Researchers ad-
ministered one of four drugs to
the 681 patients who had partici-
pated in the study as of Friday.
When a monitoring group de-

termined that two of those drugs

were vastly outperforming the

others based on data from 499

patients, scientists called off the

study and said they would exclu-

sively treat Ebola patients with

the more effective drugs going

forward.

The two antibody-based treat-

ments, REGN-EB3 and mAb-114,

work by blocking a critical pro-

tein in the Ebola virus. Patients

receive them once, intravenously,

and “ideally, as soon as possible”

after infection, Fauci said.

They saved about 90 percent of

patients with low levels of infec-

tion, according to preliminary

data released from the trial.

Across all levels of infection, pa-

tients who received REGN-EB

had a mortality rate of 29 per-

cent, while those treated with

mAb-114 had a mortality rate of

34 percent. The average mortality

rate for Ebola has been about

50 percent, according to the

WHO.

These rates were far enough

below those of the two other

treatments — including ZMapp,

first tested in the 2014 West

Africa outbreak — that scientists

decided to end the trial early.

Now, all Ebola patients will re-

ceive one of the two more effec-

tive drugs.

“This underscores the impor-

tance of doing randomized, con-

trolled trials. You can get ethical-

ly sound and scientifically sound

information rapidly,” Fauci said.

He added, “Now you can get

the two best antibodies quickly to

the people who need them.”

Fauci said that based on cur-

rent infection levels, medical pro-

fessionals on the ground in Con-

go have sufficient stores of both

drugs to administer them to all

infected people.

While they heralded the fact

that this groundbreaking re-

search took place in the turbulent

environment of eastern Congo,

researchers also acknowledged

that social and political factors

will complicate health workers’

ability to get these new drugs to

patients.

Efforts to treat Ebola have

been hampered by widespread

distrust of health workers among

residents of eastern Congo.

Tedros Ghebreyesus, the WHO

director general, said last month

that more than 200 health profes-

sionals had been attacked since

January and several had been

killed.

The region is also a conflict

zone, and attacks by armed

groups have at times forced

health workers to pause their

efforts. So even though these two

new drugs have a high likelihood

of curing patients, violence and

misinformation may prevent

many of those infected from ac-

cessing them.

“The success is clear, but there

is also a tragedy linked to this

success, and the tragedy is that

not enough people are being

treated,” said Michael J. Ryan,

executive director of the WHO

Health Emergencies Program.

“We are still seeing too many

people stay away from Ebola

treatment units, too many people

not coming to hospitals [who] are

not being found in time to benefit

from these therapies,” he added.

Muyembe Tamfum called it a

“huge responsibility” to make the

drugs accessible to infected peo-

ple.

“This is our moral responsibili-

ty and a lifelong burden on our

shoulders that we are ready to

assume with pride,” he said.

claire.parker@washpost.com

2 drugs prove e≠ective against Ebola

BAZ RATNER/REUTERS

Health workers in protective suits help a suspected Ebola patient into a treatment center in Goma,

Congo, on Aug. 3. Amid violence and distrust, getting new drugs to all patients will be a challenge.

Treatments increase

survival, will be given

to all patients in Congo

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