Monkeypox cases drop 21% globally, reversing month-long increase: WHO

The number of monkeypox cases reported globally fell by 21 percent in the past week, reversing a month-long trend of increasing infections and a possible sign that the outbreak in Europe may start to decline, according to a WHO report released Thursday.

The UN health agency reported 5,907 new cases per week and said two countries, Iran and Indonesia, were reporting their first cases. So far, more than 45,000 cases have been reported in 98 countries since late April.

The World Health Organization said cases in the Americas accounted for 60 percent of cases in the past month, while cases in Europe accounted for about 38 percent. She said infections in the Americas showed a “continuous sharp rise”.

The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that the continent recorded 219 new cases last week, an increase of 54 percent. Most of them were in Nigeria and Congo, the agency said.

In early July, just weeks before the agency declared the international spread of the disease a global emergency, the WHO’s Europe director said countries in the region were responsible for 90 percent of all laboratory-confirmed monkeypox cases.

British health authorities said last week that there were “early signs” that the outbreak of monkeypox in the country was slowing, after seeing a decrease in the number of new cases being reported daily.

The UK’s Health Security Agency downplayed the outbreak of monkeypox in the country last month, saying there was no evidence the rare disease was spreading beyond gay, bisexual or gay men.

Since monkeypox outbreaks were identified in Europe and North America in May, the World Health Organization and other health agencies have noted that its spread has been almost exclusively in men who have sex with men.

Canada’s top public health official, Dr. Theresa Tam, said during a news conference on August 12 that Canada has so far deployed 99,000 vaccines to provinces and territories. She said it was “too early to tell” if cases were slowing in Canada, although there could be “some early signs” that they are not increasing at the same rate as they were at the start of the outbreak.

There are now 1,206 cases of monkeypox across Canada, mostly in Ontario and Quebec, and Tam said Canada will soon move to sewage testing in different parts of the country to better track the spread of the disease, and build infrastructure developed in order to monitor COVID-19 while the pandemic.

The suspected source of the outbreak

Monkeypox has been endemic to parts of Africa for decades, and experts suspect an outbreak in Europe and North America after the disease began spreading through sex in two raves in Spain and Belgium.

The World Health Organization’s latest report said 98 percent of cases are among men and among those who report sexual orientation, 96 percent are men who have sex with men.

“Of all reported types of transmission, sexual encounter was most commonly reported,” the WHO said. “The majority of cases were likely detected in a party with sexual contacts.”

Of the monkeypox cases in which patients were known to have HIV status, 45 percent were infected with HIV.

The World Health Organization has recommended that men at high risk of contracting the disease temporarily consider reducing the number of sexual partners or abstaining from group or anonymous sex.

Monkeypox usually requires skin-to-skin or skin-to-mouth contact with the infected patient’s lesions in order to spread. People can also become infected through contact with the clothes or bed sheets of a person with monkeypox pests.

Legalization of the vaccine

With vaccine supplies globally limited, authorities in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom have begun rationing doses to extend supplies by up to five times.

The World Health Organization has advised countries with vaccines to prioritize immunization for those at high risk of contracting the disease, including gay and bisexual men with multiple sexual partners, and for health workers, laboratory staff and outbreak responders.

While Africa has reported the most suspected deaths from monkeypox, the continent has no vaccine supply except for a very small stock being tested in a research study in Congo.

“As we know, the situation with regard to access to monkeypox vaccine is very topical, but there are not enough doses of vaccines,” Evidio Aditieva, director general of the Nigerian Center for Disease Control, said this week. More doses will likely be available, but due to challenges with manufacturing plants and an unexpected increase in monkeypox cases, the vaccine may not actually be available until 2023.”