Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)īusiness Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. People with more serious illness may develop a rash and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body. Most monkeypox patients experience only fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. "So the volumes don't necessarily need to be big, but every country may need access to a small amount of vaccine. We're talking about providing vaccines for a targeted vaccination campaign, for targeted therapeutics," Ryan said. Mike Ryan said the agency would be working with its member countries to potentially develop a centrally controlled stockpile, similar to the ones it has helped manage to distribute during outbreaks of yellow fever, meningitis, and cholera in countries that can't afford them. Given the limited global supply of smallpox vaccines, WHO's emergencies chief Dr. She said countries with vaccine supplies could consider them for those at high risk of the disease, like close contacts of patients or health workers, but that monkeypox could mostly be controlled by isolating contacts and continued epidemiological investigations. No vaccines have been specifically developed against monkeypox, but WHO estimates that smallpox vaccines are about 85 per cent effective. Rosamund Lewis, head of WHO's smallpox department, said that there is no need for mass vaccination, explaining that monkeypox does not spread easily and typically requires skin-to-skin contact for transmission. Still, she said WHO expected to see more cases reported in the future, noting we don't know if we are just seeing the peak of the iceberg (or) if there are many more cases that are undetected in communities," she said.Īs countries including Britain, Germany, Canada and the US begin evaluating how smallpox vaccines might be used to curb the outbreak, WHO said its expert group was assessing the evidence and would provide guidance soon.ĭr. WHO's Briand said that based on how past outbreaks of the disease in Africa have evolved, the current situation appeared containable."
The disease is no more likely to affect people because of their sexual orientation and scientists warn the virus could infect others if transmission isn't curbed. And Portugal said its caseload jumped to 74 cases on Friday.ĭoctors in Britain, Spain, Portugal, Canada, the US and elsewhere have noted that the majority of infections to date have been in gay and bisexual men, or men who have sex with men. UK officials added 16 more cases to their monkeypox tally, making Britain's total 106. On Friday, Spanish authorities said the number of cases there had risen to 98, including one woman, whose infection is directly related to a chain of transmission that had been previously limited to men, according to officials in the region of Madrid. That marks a significant departure from the disease's typical pattern of spread in central and western Africa, where people are mainly infected by animals like wild rodents and primates, and outbreaks haven't spilled across borders.Īlthough WHO said nearly 200 monkeypox cases have been reported, that seemed a likely undercount. Sylvie Briand, WHO's director of pandemic and epidemic diseases.Įarlier this week, a top adviser to WHO said the outbreak in Europe, US, Israel, Australia and beyond was likely linked to sex at two recent raves in Spain and Belgium. The first sequencing of the virus shows that the strain is not different from the strains we can find in endemic countries and (this outbreak) is probably due more to a change in human behaviour, said Dr.