The World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Wednesday that the window for containing the global monkeypox epidemic may be closing.
He stated that monkeypox could be established in countries not endemic to the disease at a Geneva briefing.
The WHO has confirmed over 1,000 cases of monkeypox in 29 countries other than West and Central Africa since May. This is where the virus is most prevalent.
If the virus spreads and isn’t controlled, it can simmer at low levels indefinitely if there are no controls. There is also the possibility that cases could rise to epidemic levels in certain areas, meaning that large numbers of people will become sick within a short period.
Amira Albert Roess is a professor at George Mason University in global health and epidemiology. Is it possible that this will spread from person to person, and we won’t be able control it?
A pandemic would be a series of epidemics in different parts of the globe. Experts aren’t betting that this outcome will happen — WHO leaders, disease experts and others agree that it is possible to reverse the trend.
Dr. Rosamund L. Lewis, WHO’s technical lead for monkeypox, stated that there is still time to stop the spread of the disease in people at greatest risk.
The Food and Drug Administration approved two smallpox vaccines. Jynneos is the preferred shot approved by the U.S government to combat monkeypox.
Eric Toner, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said, “This is one the rare diseases in the which you can vaccinate someone after they’ve infected, before symptoms appear, and block the disease.”
He said, “We would have had to really screw up in order to be able not to contain this.”
Monkeypox has never been able to spread easily from one person to another. In 2003, there was a massive outbreak of monkeypox in the Western Hemisphere. There were 47 cases in the United States. There was no evidence of person-to-person transmission at that time. All infected people had come into contact with sick prairie dogs.
The current outbreak seems to have as its primary driver skin-to-skin contact between individuals, which often involves exposure to the rashes and lesions of infected persons.
Roess stated that the virus is more likely to become endemic because of ongoing human-to–human transmission and inability to stop it.
There are many factors that contribute to this cycle. One is that some cases of monkeypox are difficult to diagnose. Some patients may develop rashes that are easily confused with chickenpox or syphilis. In some cases, it may only affect the genital area making it more difficult to identify.
Second, experts in disease management worry that the U.S. doesn’t process tests fast enough to quickly identify new cases.
Roess stated that it still takes a few days for someone to be identified and confirmed their diagnosis.
Dr. Stuart Isaacs is an associate professor of medicine at Penn. He said that the virus could be “epidemic” in the United States. This means there could be a significant increase in cases if one infected person spreads monkeypox to more people than the average. This has not been the case so far. The U.S. has only recorded 40 cases.
Isaacs stated that it was still too early to say whether this outbreak will explode. However, the probability is very low.
He said that the virus is endemic in Africa because of its animal reservoirs. “The virus spreads among animals and then jumps into nonhuman primates or humans every now and again.”
Roess stated that in the past monkeypox was quickly stopped by testing and contact tracers. However, the current outbreak is unprecedentedly severe and widespread.
Experts aren’t sure if the outbreak’s scale is an indicator that monkeypox evolved to be more effective at transmitting human-to-human disease or if countries are just discovering the extent of an epidemic that was not detected for some time.
Already, the monkeypox pandemic may be in full swing. The virus has spread from person to person in at most two countries and is causing widespread epidemics in many parts of the globe.
Toner stated, “But generally, when you talk about pandemics we talk about diseases that all are significantly at risk in every nation or almost every country.” “So far, it has not crossed that threshold and I don’t believe it will ever.”
Roess stated that global health leaders should be wary of declaring an emergency because the Covid-19 pandemic doesn’t seem to be overly likely.
She stated that there was a lot of hesitation in declaring this a pandemic.
There is good news: this monkeypox virus isn’t often life-threatening. Experts said that although monkeypox rashes may be painful and can cause scarring, doctors are well-equipped to treat them using smallpox antivirals as well as supportive care. Non-endemic countries have not reported any deaths.