Geneva: According to a World Health Organization report released on Thursday (August), there has been a 21% drop in the number of recorded monkeypox cases globally in the past week, reversing a month-long trend of rising infections and There is a possible sign that the outbreak in Europe may be starting to subside. 25, 2022). The UN health agency reported 5,907 new weekly cases and said two countries, Iran and Indonesia, reported their first cases. More than 45,000 cases have been reported in 98 countries since the end of April.
The WHO said last month the US accounted for 60% of cases, while Europe comprised about 38% of cases. It said infections in the US showed a “sustained sharp increase”.
In early July, weeks before the agency declared the international spread of the disease a global emergency, the WHO’s Europe director said countries in the region were responsible for 90% of all laboratory confirmed cases of monkeypox.
British health officials said last week after seeing a daily drop in the number of new cases that were “early signs” that the monkeypox outbreak was slowing in the country.
The UK’s Health Protection Agency last month downplayed the country’s outbreak of monkeypox, saying there was no evidence the once rare disease was spreading beyond men who were gay, bisexual or having sex with other men. Were.
Since outbreaks of monkeypox were identified in Europe and North America in May, the WHO and other health agencies have noted that its spread was almost exclusively among men who had sex with men.
Monkeypox has been endemic in parts of Africa for decades and experts suspect the outbreak began in Europe and North America after the disease spread through sex in two waves in Spain and Belgium.
The latest WHO report states that 98% of cases are in men and 96% of those reporting sexual orientation are in men who have sex with men.
“Of all the forms of transmission, a sexual encounter was the most commonly reported,” the WHO said. “Most of the cases are likely to be exposed at the party with the sexual contact,” the agency said.
Of the cases of monkeypox in which the HIV status of the patients was known, 45% were infected with HIV.
WHO recommends that men at high risk of the disease consider temporarily reducing their number of sexual partners or abstaining from group or anonymous sex.
Monkeypox usually requires skin-to-skin or skin-to-mouth contact for the infected patient’s wounds to spread. People can also become infected by coming into contact with clothing or sheets of a person with monkeypox wounds.
With the supply of vaccines limited globally, authorities in the US, Europe and the UK have begun rationing doses to increase the supply by up to five times.
The WHO has advised countries that have it to prioritize vaccination for people at high risk of disease, including gay and bisexual men with multiple sex partners, and for health workers, laboratory workers and outbreak responders .
While Africa has reported the most suspected deaths from monkeypox, the continent has no vaccine supplies other than a very small stock being tested in a research study in Congo.
“As we know, monkeypox vaccine access is very timely, but vaccines do not have sufficient doses,” Ifedayo Edetifa, director-general of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, said this week. Potentially, much higher doses will become available, but due to challenges with manufacturing factories and an unexpected increase in monkeypox cases, the vaccine may not actually be available until 2023.