More than 6,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported from 58 countries in the current outbreak, the World Health Organization said. The UN will also convene a committee meeting to advise on the declaration of a global health emergency, the highest level of WHO awareness, in the week beginning July 18 or soon, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference from WHO ,Geneva.
At its last meeting on June 27, the committee ruled that the outbreak, which has seen cases increase in African countries where it is common and globally, was not yet a medical emergency.”I continue to be concerned about the prevalence and spread of the virus worldwide,” said Tedros, adding that the lack of testing means that there may be many other unreported cases.About 80 percent of European cases, he said. Monkeypox, a rare bacterial infection that causes symptoms such as colds and sores on the skin, has spread around the world since early May.The death toll from the previous outbreak in Africa is now almost 1 percent, but so far the outbreak appears to be less deadly in countries without epidemics.
As of 13 May 2022, and as of 2 June 2022, 780 certified monkeypox cases have been reported or identified by WHO from 27 Member States in all four WHO HIV-negative regions monkeypox. Epidemiological investigations are ongoing. Many of the cases reported so far have been reported about sexual health or other health services in primary or secondary health care facilities and are highly involved, but not limited to, men having sex with men (MSM).
While the West African clade of the virus has been identified in the case samples so far, most of the confirmed cases have a history of migration and reported that they traveled to European and North American countries, rather than to West or Central Africa where the monopoly virus is prevalent. Verification of monkeypox in people who did not go to a permanent place is rare, and even a single case of monkeypox in a non-permanent country is considered an outbreak. Although many situations may be related to travel from the epicenter, the Member States also report small numbers of travelers from Nigeria, as noted earlier.
The sudden and unexpected emergence of monkeypox simultaneously in a number of non-viral states suggests that there may be an unexplained transmission at some unknown time followed by recent amplifier events. The WHO is assessing the risks at the global level as a medium considering that it is the first time that many cases of monocytes and clusters have been reported simultaneously in non-epidemic countries located in various WHO locations.
