Hot Zone Summary

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Hot Zone explicitly demonstrates the quick spread of the Ebola virus and human’s efforts to fight back the filoviruses (Ebola Zaire, Ebola Reston, Marburg, and Ebola Sudan).
Richard Preston, the author, starts the book with the story of Charles Monet, a Frenchman who lives near the Nzoia Sugar Factory in western Kenya. On New Year’s Eve, he takes a trip to Mount Elgon where Kitum Cave is located. After his trip, he acquires a severe headache, backache, and red eyes, he starts to vomit, and his personality begins to change. Monet’s co-workers, believing that he needs to be treated as soon as possible, take him to the hospital. At the Nairobi Hospital, Monet vomits blood all over Dr. Musoke and dies the next day. After few days, Dr. Musoke, showing …show more content…

Bill Volt and Dan Dalgard, employees of the monkey house, could not figure out the cause of massive death of newly arrived monkeys and decide to send blood samples and spleen to USAMRIID for closer examinations. Tom Geisbert, an intern at USAMRIID, examines samples from the infected monkey and finds out that cells are covered with a rope-like virus. Therefore, Geisbert and Jahrling start to consider that the samples are contaminated with Ebola-virus. They ask Detrick if he could invite them to the monkey house for testing but he is reluctant to let them into the monkey house. Instead, he provides dead monkeys that are infected for them to examine. At the same time, meeting is being held by Colonel Peters, Dan Dalgard, Peter Jarling, Gene Johnson, and representatives from the C.D.C. and they concede to go in the monkey house, euthanize every monkey, and bring back samples to USAMRIID. Two of the employees start vomiting and show symptoms of Ebola. However, the virus turns out to be Ebola Reston, airborne Ebola that does not influence humans. While they euthanize the monkeys, specialist Rhonda Williams finds a hole in her space suit but she never develops any symptoms. At the end of the chapter, they successfully kill all of the

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