The contact-transmitted mpox virus will not be the identical because the airborne COVID-19 virus, and they don’t “spread the same way,” a World Health Organization (WHO) official mentioned on Thursday.
Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention of WHO, and Otim Patrick Ramadan, staff chief of the Acute Events Management of WHO Regional Office for Africa, spoke about mpox virus throughout a web-based program they held on X.
“We’re not seeing the same situation unfold,” Kerkhove mentioned, referring to the course of coronavirus.
“Anyone can get mpox if you’re in contact with an infected individual,” she highlighted. “But it doesn’t mean everyone will get infected with mpox.”
The fast and environment friendly transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus via the air, resulting in the swift world unfold of COVID-19, highlights a big distinction in how this virus operates in comparison with others, she confused.
“There’s so much that we can do with the right information, with interrupting transmission in different ways,” she said.
Mpox is a viral illness that may unfold via shut contact in addition to via contaminated supplies like sheets, clothes and needles, in keeping with WHO.
13 COUNTRIES WITH MPOX
Ramadan identified that “mpox can affect anybody.”
“We are seeing transmission at household level affecting children, but we are also seeing adults who are affected as well,” he confused.
“Now, currently in the African region, we have active outbreak in 13 countries, and then in these 13 countries, we are seeing a wide range of people being affected,” the official mentioned.
Noting that 30% of the instances in Burundi and neighboring the Democratic Republic of Congo, the place the outbreak is widespread, are seen below the age of 18, he mentioned: “This is worrying.”
He emphasised that vaccination is an extra public well being imply to include mpox virus, lamenting that the correct quantity of vaccines can’t be reached in Africa.
Recalling that WHO presently recommends the usage of MVA-BN and LC16 vaccines towards mpox, Ramadan identified the significance of “targeted vaccination” of these in danger and excessive danger of transmission.
Last week, the WHO and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared mpox a public well being emergency of worldwide and continental concern.
According to the most recent Africa CDC figures, as many as 17, 541 mpox instances and 517 deaths have to date been reported from 13 African international locations.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the epicenter of the present outbreak, accounts for 96% of all instances and 97% of all deaths reported in 2024.
Congo has recorded 16,700 confirmed or suspected instances of mpox, together with greater than 570 deaths.
South Africa recorded 24 confirmed instances, together with three deaths, and Cameroon 5 confirmed instances, together with two deaths. Burundi has over 100 instances, whereas Nigeria has 39, Liberia has 5, Rwanda has 4, Ivory Coast and Uganda have two every, and Kenya has one confirmed case.
Source: www.anews.com.tr