“We know that the number of” monkeypox “cases could increase in the next few days, we are really at the beginning of this event. The first case was notified on May 7, so it is only 3 weeks and we know that we will have more cases in the days to come “. To highlight it was Sylvie Briand, director of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Preparedness (WHO), during the technical briefing on the monkeypox outbreak underway in several countries, which is being held at the 75th World Health Assembly.
Today, the expert pointed out, we are seeing a high number of cases in multiple countries in a few days. “This event is unusual – she noted – because we usually have either zero or truly sporadic cases in non-endemic countries.”
“We have many unknowns, because we don’t know if this situation is due to a change in the virus“and” does not seem so, because the first sequence of the virus shows that the strain is no different from what we can find in endemic countries. Probably “what is happening” will be due to a change in human behavior, but we are investigating. There are also many uncertainties for the future, “said Briand.
“We do not know if this transmission will stop. In endemic countries we see limited outbreaks and we hope it will be exactly the same with the current one, but we do not know. As we do not know the” real “extent of the disease – continued the expert – We asked the countries to be more vigilant “and now” they detect more cases. We hope to know “what the situation is” in the coming days, but at the moment we don’t know if we see the tip of the iceberg and there are more cases still not detected in the communities; we do not know if there are animal ‘reservoirs’ or the mode of transmission “. Therefore it is “difficult to assess the risk of spread in the community”Briand pointed out.
“E’ very important to communicate about this event to avoid panic and stigmatization towards some groups and reduce the impact on society. We do not recommend travel restrictions. We need risk-based and risk-commensurate strategies and, if there are possibilities to use vaccines or treatments, they must be used with public health needs in mind and we must be truly wise in the use of these countermeasures. We also need global collaboration, “he stressed.
The expert reiterated a message already launched in recent days by other WHO experts. Monkeypox “is not Covid”. “We think that-she added- if you put the right measures in place now, we can probably contain it easily. We want to raise awareness because we are really at the beginning and we have a good window of opportunity to stop broadcasting now. “