Monkeypox: Despite a declining trend in some countries, six countries reported their first cases last week.
Geneva:
Monkeypox experts discussed Thursday whether the World Health Organization should classify the outbreak as a global health emergency — the highest alarm it can sound.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a second meeting of the WHO emergency committee on the virus was held to investigate the deteriorating situation, with nearly 15,400 cases reported from 71 countries.
Since early May, an increase in monkeypox infections has been reported outside of the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.
On June 23, the WHO convened an emergency committee of experts to decide whether monkeypox constitutes a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) – the UN health organization’s highest alert level.
But a majority told WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the situation had not yet reached the threshold at that point.
The second meeting was convened and the number of files continued to increase.
“I need your advice in assessing the short- and medium-term public health implications,” Tedros said at the start of the meeting.
If the Tedros committee advises that the outbreak is a PHEIC, it will make temporary recommendations on how to better prevent and reduce the spread of the disease and manage the global public health response.
But there is no timetable for when the outcome will be made public.
Information battle
Ninety-eight percent of reported cases “are among men who have sex with men (MSM) — and especially those who have multiple recent anonymous or new partners,” Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s technical chief for monkey pox, told a news conference Wednesday. .
According to the WHO, they are generally young and mainly in urban areas.
Tedros said on Thursday this presented a challenge, as in some countries, “affected communities face life-threatening discrimination”.
“There is a very real concern that men who have sex with men could be stigmatized or blamed for the outbreak, making the outbreak much harder to track and stop,” he told the meeting.
Tedros said the first committee meeting helped outline the dynamics of the outbreak, but he remained concerned about the number of cases.
Despite a clear downward trend in some countries, six countries reported their first cases last week.
“As the outbreak develops, it is important to assess the effectiveness of public health interventions in different settings, to better understand what works and what doesn’t,” he said.
Tedros also said information coming from endemic countries in Africa was “very scarce,” making it difficult to characterize the situation in the region and design interventions.
A viral infection similar to smallpox, first discovered in humans in 1970, monkeypox is less dangerous and contagious than smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980.
‘Scary and tiring’
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said 7,896 confirmed cases had been reported from 27 countries in the European Economic Area as of Monday.
The worst affected were Spain (2,835), Germany (1,924), France (912), the Netherlands (656) and Portugal (515).
“It is very likely that certain sexual practices have facilitated and could further facilitate the transmission of monkeypox between MSM groups,” it said.
The Danish company Bavarian Nordic is the only laboratory producing an approved vaccine against monkey pox and stings are currently scarce.
Loyce Pace, the assistant secretary for global affairs at the US Department of Health and Human Services, said it is “very difficult” for the world to tackle monkeypox on top of Covid-19 and other health crises.
“I know it can be scary…and, frankly, exhausting,” she told reporters from the US mission in Geneva.
“However, we know a lot more about this disease, we’ve been able to stop outbreaks before and, most importantly, we have medical countermeasures and other tools available.”
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
