In this photo illustration, a photo of a hand infected with the smallpox virus is seen through a magnifying glass. Smallpox is a viral disease that occurs mainly in Central and West Africa.
Rafael Henrique | light rocket | Getty Images
The World Health Organization on Wednesday confirmed more than 550 cases of monkeypox in 30 countries as the virus continues to spread around the world.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the sudden appearance of monkeypox in several countries around the world indicates that the virus has spread undetected for a long time outside the nations of the world. ‘West and Central Africa where it is commonly found.
The virus may have been spreading undetected for months or years, although research is ongoing and there are still no clear answers, according to Dr. Rosamund Lewis, WHO’s technical director of smallpox.
“We really don’t know if it’s too late to contain it. What the WHO and all the member states are trying to do is prevent the spread,” Lewis told a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday. Monitoring contacts and isolating patients who have monkeypox are crucial to stopping the spread, he said.
Tedros said most cases have been reported by men who sought care at sexual health clinics after having sex with other men and developed symptoms. He stressed that anyone can spread monkeypox through close physical contact, warned not to stigmatize people, and called on countries to step up surveillance to identify cases in the wider population.
Symptoms of monkeypox usually resolve on their own, Tedros said, although the disease can be severe in some cases. No deaths have been reported in current outbreaks in North America and Europe. However, monkeypox has not yet spread to the most vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women and children in these regions, said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical director of Covid-19.
However, the WHO has been monitoring monkeypox in Africa for five decades and reports deaths on the continent each year, Lewis said. More than 70 monkeypox deaths have been reported in five African countries in 2022, he said. Cases of smallpox have increased in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in recent years, perhaps because smallpox vaccination was stopped in 1980. Smallpox is part of the same virus family as smallpox, although it is lighter.
“Collective immunity in the human population since then is not what it was at the time of the eradication of smallpox,” Lewis said. “Anyone under the age of 40 or 50, depending on the country where you were born or where you may have received your smallpox vaccine, would now not have this protection against this particular vaccine.”
WHO and member countries have maintained smallpox vaccine reserves, although they are mostly first-generation vaccines that do not meet current standards, Lewis said. There are also new generation vaccines and treatments for smallpox, but supply is limited. The WHO is working with companies to increase access to these new vaccines and treatments, he said.
“The WHO does not recommend mass vaccination. There is no need for mass vaccination,” Lewis said. At the moment, the virus is spreading mainly in a specific community, men having sex with men, and it is important to provide people in that community with the information they need to protect themselves and prevent the virus from spreading. he said.
The largest outbreaks of smallpox outside Africa are found in Europe, especially in the UK, Spain and Portugal. The United States has reported at least 15 cases in nine states.
Monkeypox usually starts with flu-like symptoms, such as fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, exhaustion, and swollen lymph nodes. Infectious lesions form on the body. Smallpox from the monkey is transmitted mainly through sustained skin-to-skin contact with these lesions. A person is no longer considered to be contagious once the lesions have disappeared and a new layer of skin has formed.
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