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Which symptoms usually appear first in Ebola virus disease?
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Ebola
Numerous filamentous ebolavirus particles (blue) budding from a chronically-infected VERO E6 cell (yellow-green) in this digitally colorized scanning electron micrograph produced by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Symptoms of Ebola virus disease typically appear suddenly between 2 and 21 days after exposure. The initial signs of the illness often include:12
- Fever12
- Fatigue1
- Headache12
- Muscle pain12
- Sore throat12
- Loss of appetite2
Because these early symptoms are non-specific, they can often be mistaken for other illnesses such as malaria or influenza, which can make the disease difficult to identify during the initial stages of an outbreak.1