Risk of monkeypox spreading widely ‘very low’: EUĮU health agency ECDC, too, said the risk that the rare disease monkeypox would spread widely among the general population was “very low”, though high for certain groups. On Monday, Denmark’s infectious disease agency SSI also reported that a first case had been confirmed in the Scandinavian country. As of May 21, the WHO has received reports of 92 laboratory-confirmed monkeypox cases and 28 suspected cases from 12 countries where the disease is not endemic, including several European nations, the United States, Australia and Canada. Van Kerkhove added that as surveillance widened, experts did expect to see more cases. Anybody can contract monkeypox through close contact,” Seale added. This demographic is generally a demographic that really does take care of health screening… They’ve been proactive about responding to unusual symptoms. “While we are seeing some cases amongst men who have sex with men, this is not a gay disease, as some people in social media have attempted to label it. Van Kerkhove said a major global meeting next week would discuss research, epidemiology, diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.Īndy Seale, strategies adviser at the WHO’s global HIV, hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections programmes, said while the virus could be caught through sexual activity, it was not a sexually transmitted disease. Virologists will be studying the first genomic sequences of the virus coming through, she added. “We don’t yet have evidence yet that there is mutation in the virus itself,” she said. Lewis said it was not yet known whether the virus had mutated but viruses in the wider orthopoxvirus group “tend not to mutate and they tend to be fairly stable”. Now we’re seeing it more in urban areas,” she said. “It is primarily in the animal kingdom in forested areas. She cited Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, “this is the first time we’re seeing cases across many countries at the same time and people who have not travelled to the endemic regions in Africa”, she said. Rosamund Lewis, who heads the smallpox secretariat on the WHO emergencies programme, said monkeypox had been known for at least 40 years and a few cases had appeared in Europe over the last five years in travellers from the endemic regions. Van Kerkhove said transmission was happening via “close physical contact: skin-to-skin contact”, and that most of the people identified so far had not had a severe case of the disease.
We can stop human-to-human transmission.” The disease is considered endemic in 11 African nations. She added, “We’re in a situation where we can use public health tools of early identification, supported isolation of cases. We can do this in non-endemic countries.” “We want to stop human-to-human transmission. “This is a containable situation, particularly in the countries where we are seeing these outbreaks that are happening across Europe, in North America as well,” Van Kerkhove told a live interaction on the UN health agency’s social media channels. Fewer than 200 confirmed and suspected cases had been recorded so far, the WHO’s emerging disease lead Maria Van Kerkhove said.
The monkeypox outbreaks in non-endemic countries can be contained and human-to-human transmission of the virus stopped, the World Health Organization said Monday.