The World Health Organization is already counting more than 550 cases of monkeypox worldwide, Rosamund Lewis, technical director of the monkeypox group, told CNN International on Tuesday.
“In fact, today we have over 550 confirmed cases in 30 countries in four of the six WHO regions,” Lewis said.
“What we see now is really quite different,” she said, given that the outbreak is happening in several places at once.
“We see that all cases appear in a relatively short period of time. We see that in a few days, in a few weeks, we see over 500 cases. This is different. This has not been observed before. “
In an update over the weekend, the WHO said it had received reports of 257 confirmed cases of monkeypox and about 120 suspected cases in 23 countries where the virus is not endemic.
Lewis said the WHO did not know the source of the outbreak and called on states to use the “window of opportunity” to prevent the development of cases in a larger outbreak.
The group said in a briefing over the weekend that the global level of public health risk was moderate, “given that this is the first time monkeypox cases and clusters have been reported simultaneously in many different WHO geographical areas and without known epidemiological links with non-endemic countries in West or Central Africa. “
However, he added: “The risk to public health can be high if this virus is used to establish itself as a human pathogen and spread to groups at higher risk of serious diseases such as young children and immunosuppressed people.
The WHO is urging healthcare providers to look closely for possible symptoms such as rash, fever, swollen lymph nodes, headaches, back pain, muscle aches and fatigue, and to offer tests to anyone who has these symptoms.
During a news briefing on Monday, Lewis said he was “not worried about a global pandemic” from monkeypox at the moment.
The virus is not new, she told CNNI, but the WHO will meet this week to establish a research program and priorities for testing the virus.
“It’s been there before and we have a basic knowledge base that we can build on, but there are still a lot of questions,” she said.
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