LONDON, July 27 (Reuters) – Scientists advising the World Health Organization (WHO) on monkeypox say the window is closing to stop its spread, with cases currently doubling every two weeks, raising fears that it will take several months for the epidemic to peak.
The WHO for Europe predicted just over 27,000 cases of monkeypox in 88 countries by August 2, up from 17,800 cases in nearly 70 countries at the last count. Read more
Making predictions beyond that is complicated, scientists around the world told Reuters, but continued transmission is likely for several months, and possibly longer, they said.
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“We have to face it,” said Anne Rimoane, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“It’s clear that the options are closing,” added Rimoane, a member of the WHO expert panel on monkeypox, which met last week to determine whether the outbreak constitutes a global health emergency.
The majority of committee members voted against the move, and in an unprecedented step, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared a state of emergency anyway.
Actions stemming from that declaration must be urgent, including increased vaccination, testing, isolation for those infected and contact tracing, global health experts said.
“The transmission is clearly not verified,” said Antoine Flao, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva, who chairs the WHO Europe advisory group. Jimmy Whitworth, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said he expected cases not to plateau for at least the next four to six months, or until those at highest risk of infection were vaccinated or infected. Sexual health organizations recently estimated that this could be as many as 125,000 people in the UK.
Monkeypox has been a globally neglected public health problem in parts of Africa for decades, but in May cases began to be reported outside countries where it is endemic.
A person arrives to receive a monkeypox vaccination at the Northwell Urgent Care Center in Fire Island-Cherry Grove, New York, U.S., July 15, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
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It usually causes mild to moderate symptoms, including fever, fatigue, and the characteristic painful skin lesions that disappear within a few weeks. Five people have died in the current outbreak, all in Africa.
Beyond Africa, monkeypox is mainly spread among men who have sex with men, putting sexual health clinics on alert for new cases. Read more
“I clearly remember … saying that, ‘I think I’m going to die,’ because I can’t eat, I can’t drink. I can’t even swallow my own spit,” said Haroon Tulunai, 35, a sexual health advocate who was hospitalized with monkeypox in London earlier this month but has since recovered.
“EXTENDED TRANSMISSION”
Although monkeypox does not cause a large number of deaths worldwide, a nasty virus establishing itself in new populations is still bad news, scientists said.
Flahault’s group has modeled three scenarios for the coming months, all of which involve “prolonged transmission,” or men having sex with men; outside these groups and possibly in more vulnerable populations, such as children, or between humans and animals.
The latter scenario risks creating a reservoir for monkeypox in animals in new countries, as has happened in parts of West and Central Africa, Flaholt said.
Continued transmission may also lead to mutations that make the virus more effective at spreading to humans, the scientists said.
On Tuesday, German scientists published a pre-peer review study that found mutations in one of the 47 cases they sequenced that could help monkeypox spread more easily to humans.
“The alarm bell was going off (in Africa) but we kept hitting the snooze button. Now is the time to wake up and do something about it,” Rimoane said. “An infection anywhere is potentially an infection anywhere.”
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Reporting by Jennifer Rigby and Natalie Grover; Additional reporting by Natalie Thomas in London; Editing by Michelle Gershberg, Bill Berkrot and Frank Jack Daniel
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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