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LONDON – The European drug regulator is stepping up its response to escalating cases of monkeypox, days after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency.
The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) emergency task force, an advisory body tasked with managing regulatory activities during a public health emergency, will now address both COVID-19 and smallpox, the regulator said on Wednesday .
The working group will provide scientific advice, review available scientific data and coordinate independent follow-up studies on interventions, such as the Bavarian Nordic vaccine and the SIGA Technologies antiviral, that are being used to combat monkeypox.
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Monkeypox is a virus that usually causes mild symptoms such as fever, aches, and pus-filled skin lesions. People usually recover on their own within two to four weeks, according to the WHO.
First identified in monkeys, the virus is transmitted primarily through close contact and is typically endemic to Africa.
After initial reports of European cases in May, cases have risen to more than 16,000 from more than 75 countries. Five deaths have been reported so far, all in Africa.
On Tuesday, British health agencies secured funding to develop a standardized approach to testing the performance of vaccines in use or in development against monkeypox.
It is very difficult to predict how the outbreak will develop, said Carlos Maluquer de Motes, who leads a research group studying the biology of the poxvirus at the University of Surrey.
“There has been no decrease in the number of confirmed smallpox cases since the start of the outbreak … this indicates that the public health measures deployed so far have had minimal impact and that the outbreak is unlikely to disappear due to natural causes”. (Reporting by Natalie Grover in London; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)