The most unexpected number in the first detailed clinical account of a Bundibugyo virus patient is not the survival. It is where the virus was concentrated.
On day five of illness, an oropharyngeal swab from a 39-year-old American healthcare worker evacuated from the Democratic Republic of the Congo carried roughly 9 x 10⁷ copies of viral RNA per milliliter. His plasma that same day carried about 7 x 10⁶. More than a tenfold difference, with the throat, not the bloodstream, holding the larger load.
