The “steady downward trend” of monkeypox cases in Canada is “encouraging” as several countries in the Americas deal with rising numbers of infections, the head of the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
“In the Americas, which accounts for more than half of the reported cases, several countries continue to see increasing numbers of infections, although it is encouraging to see a sustained downward trend in Canada,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of This was announced by the World Health Organization at a press conference in Geneva.
Some European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands are also seeing a “clear slowdown” in the monkeypox outbreak, he added.
He says the drop in cases demonstrates “the effectiveness of public health interventions” as well as tracking infections and preventing transmission.
“These signs confirm what we have been saying consistently from the beginning: that with the right measures, this is an outbreak that can be stopped,” the director general said.
“And in regions where there is no animal-to-human transmission, this is a virus that can be eliminated.”
Canada has something in common 1228 cases of monkeypoxwith the majority in Ontario and Quebec, but the rate at which cases are spreading has slowed in recent weeks, with only 169 cases reported since August 12.
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam has not commented on the monkeypox outbreak since Aug. 12, when she said it was “too early to tell” whether cases here were slowing, adding that there could be “some early signs’ that they are not growing at the same rate as at the beginning of the epidemic.
WATCH | WHO says monkeypox outbreak in Canada is declining
Tam also said Canada will soon move to testing wastewater in different regions of the country to better track the spread of the disease, building on infrastructure developed to monitor COVID-19 during the pandemic.
WHO regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said during a press conference on Tuesday that it is possible eliminating the monkeypox epidemic in Europehighlighting evidence that the number of cases is slowing in several countries.
There are encouraging signs of a steady decline each week in the onset of cases in many European countries, including France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Britain, as well as a slowdown in some parts of the United States, despite scarce vaccine supplies.
“We believe we can eliminate sustained human-to-human transmission of monkeypox in [European] region,” Kluge said. “To move toward elimination … we urgently need to increase our efforts.”
The number of cases of monkeypox reported worldwide also fell by 21 percent last week, reversing a month-long trend of rising infections and a possible signal that the epidemic in Europe may be beginning to decline, according to a WHO report published on August 25.
The WHO reported 5,907 new cases weekly and said two countries, Iran and Indonesia, reported their first cases last week. To date, more than 46,000 cases have been reported in 98 countries since late April.
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