Marburg strain used in Pittsburgh mutates

Researcher dies finding 'new' bug

HARRISBURG, Pa. (RWN) - A prominent infectious disease researcher working in the quarantined city of Pittsburgh apparently died as the result of a new strain of the biological agent that decimated the city's population in 2016.

Jabbar Quantril, an epidemiologist at the Islamic States Center for Infectious Diseases, died in a Harrisburg hospital last night after contracting a new form of the Marburg virus. It is believed he had contracted the virus earlier in the week while working in the deserted city.

"At this point, we don't know very much about what killed Dr. Quantril," said Helle Cabot, the chief of medicine at Harrisburg Regional Medical Center. "Our micrography shows that the virus is a variant of Marburg, but one that has adapted to living well in cold climates. So it's a mutation. And it causes a horrible death."

Quantril was rushed to the hospital three days ago from Pittsburgh after intense vomiting and a temperature that reached 105 degrees.

"He felt like he had a cold for a few days," his colleague Caspar Rakim said. "Then he went downhill and he started developing a maculopapular rash and we called for an air evacuation."

Neither Rakim nor any of the other members of the team in Pittsburgh contracted the virus, though they are being held in isolation for the next two weeks. Marburg has an incubation period between 5 and 10 days.

Nearly all 2.5 million people in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area died in 2016 after weaponized Marburg was introduced into the area by Bible Belt agents in a coordinated biological weapons attack.

The virus, which occurs naturally in Africa, had long been studied by military officials as a city-killing weapon, designed to spread panic and terror through a population.

Most of the population was dead and the city was infested with Marburg spores that, when they were weaponized, became resistant to ultraviolet light. The decision was made to incinerate Pittsburgh.

On August 15, 2016, a parade of aging B-52 bombers dropped 1.6 million tons of fuel-air explosives over the area, setting off a firestorm that lasted 12 weeks.



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