WHO in Europe has forecast just over 27,000 cases of monkeypox in 88 countries by August 2, up from 17,800 cases in nearly 70 countries at the last count. read more Making predictions beyond that is complicated, scientists around the world told Reuters, but it is likely that there will be continuous transmission for several months and possibly longer, they said. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register “We have to deal with it,” said Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s clear that the window of opportunity to do this is closing,” added Rimoin, a member of the WHO expert panel on monkeypox that met last week to determine whether the outbreak constituted a global health emergency. A majority of committee members voted against the move and, in an unprecedented step, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared a state of emergency anyway. Action stemming from that declaration must be urgent, including increased vaccination, testing, isolation for those infected and contact tracing, global health experts said. “The transmission is clearly out of control,” said Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva, who chairs the WHO’s advisory group for Europe. Jimmy Whitworth, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said he expected cases would not increase for at least the next four to six months, or until people at highest risk of infection are either vaccinated or infected. . Sexual health organizations recently estimated that there could be as many as 125,000 people in the UK. Monkeypox has been a globally neglected public health problem in parts of Africa for decades, but cases began to be reported outside countries where it is endemic in May. A person arrives to receive a monkeypox vaccination at Northwell Health Immediate Care Center in Fire Island-Cherry Grove, New York, U.S., July 15, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz read more It generally causes mild to moderate symptoms, such as fever, fatigue and the characteristic painful skin lesions, which resolve within a few weeks. Five people have died from the current outbreak, all in Africa. Beyond Africa, monkeypox is spreading mostly among men who have sex with men, putting sexual health clinics on alert for new cases. read more “I clearly remember… saying I think I’m going to die, because I can’t eat, I can’t drink. I can’t even swallow my spit,” said Harun Tulunay, 35. a sexual health campaigner who was hospitalized with monkeypox in London earlier this month but has since recovered.
“CONTINUE TRANSMISSION”
Although monkeypox does not cause large numbers of deaths worldwide, a nasty virus establishing itself in new populations is still bad news, scientists said. Flahault’s team has formulated three scenarios for the coming months, all of which involve “prolonged transmission,” either between men who have sex with men. beyond these groups and possibly to more vulnerable populations such as children or between humans and animals. The latter scenario risks creating a reservoir for monkeypox in livestock in new countries, as has happened in parts of west and central Africa, Flahault said. Continued transmission could also lead to mutations that make the virus more effective at spreading to humans, the scientists said. On Tuesday, German scientists published a study before peer review that found mutations in one of the 47 cases they sequenced that could help monkeypox spread more easily to humans. “The alarm was ringing (in Africa) but we kept hitting the snooze button. Now is the time to wake up and do something about it,” Rimoin said. “An infection anywhere is potentially an infection everywhere.” Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Jennifer Rigby and Natalie Grover. Additional reporting by Natalie Thomas in London. Editing by Michele Gershberg, Bill Berkrot and Frank Jack Daniel Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
