Monkeypox, a sometimes serious disease that can be transmitted to animals and humans, usually occurs in Central and West Africa. But the virus has now been observed far across the continent. While the virus is not often fatal and does not spread as easily as the coronavirus, the new cases of monkey pox raise important questions about how patients far from Africa are infected.
On Friday, a WHO committee called the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards with Pandemic and Epidemic Potential will meet to discuss the cases. WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said the WHO held “daily” meetings with experts from affected countries and others in the global health community.
The move came as Germany, France and Belgium also confirmed their first cases of monkeypox, joining a growing list of countries where cases of the rare viral disease have emerged outside of the disease’s typical area in recent days.
The first case in Germany was registered in Bavaria on Thursday, according to the Bundeswehr Institute for Microbiology, a military research facility of the German armed forces.
“The Institute of Microbiology of the German Armed Forces in Munich has now also confirmed the monkeypox virus for the first time in Germany on May 19, 2022 without doubt in a patient with characteristic skin lesions,” reads a statement from the medical service.
The patient is a 26-year-old man from Brazil who had traveled in Germany, according to a statement from the Bavarian Ministry of Health. The man had traveled through Portugal and Spain before entering Germany and had visited Düsseldorf and Frankfurt before reaching Munich, where he was said to have been for about a week.
German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Friday it was only a “matter of time” before monkeypox would reach the country, according to state broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Lauterbach said he was confident an outbreak could be contained by a virus that does not appear to be easily transmitted if authorities act quickly.
“We are now going to analyze the virus more closely and investigate whether it is a more contagious variant,” Lauterbach said, according to Reuters.
The French health ministry on Friday confirmed the first case of monkey pox in the Île-de-France region, which includes Paris. A 29-year-old man is not in serious condition but is in home isolation at home, the service said in a statement. Although the man had not recently traveled to a country where monkey pox is already spreading, health authorities have launched a full investigation into the matter, the French health ministry said.
In Belgium, officials from Leuven University Hospital said they had confirmed two cases of monkeypox in the country with whole-genome sequencing.
“People who recognize injuries like the one in this photo should contact their doctor,” virologist Marc Van Ranst wrote in a tweet on Friday morning, sharing photos of monkeypox’s signature lesions.
A spokesman for the Belgian Agency for Care and Health told Reuters that the first infected person had been diagnosed in Antwerp. The person was not seriously ill and was now in isolation with his partner. Van Ranst wrote on Twitter that the second patient was a man who had been diagnosed in Flemish Brabant.
Flemish broadcaster VRTNWS reported Friday that although the two patients were diagnosed in different parts of the country, they may have attended the same party.
Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke said the government is closely monitoring the situation. “Does that mean we should now fear a major outbreak here? We don’t think so’, Vandenbroucke tells VRTNWS. “But as always, you have to be careful and foresight.”
While most confirmed cases so far have been found in Europe, researchers in North America and Australia have also reported cases.
Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health official, said Friday that the country has confirmed two cases of monkeypox and that “just under a few dozen” suspected cases are under investigation in Quebec and British Columbia. “We don’t know to what extent the spread has occurred in Canada,” Tam told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa.
“Until now we know that not a lot of this is related to travel to Africa where the disease is normally seen, so this is unusual.”
Mylène Drouin, public health director in Montreal, said on Thursday that the first suspected cases of monkeypox in the area were reported on May 12 by clinics specializing in sexually transmitted diseases, even though symptoms had started weeks earlier.
She said the suspected cases are in men between the ages of 30 and 55 who have had sex with other men. She said most cases were not serious and the disease is not sexually transmitted but is spread through close contact.
Canadian public health officials said labs have not yet completed genetic sequencing of the samples and one question is the role of asymptomatic transmission. They said the risk to the overall population is considered low, but they emphasized the need to be open-minded about the possibility that the virus has somehow changed or evolved.
“The fact that it’s now appearing in several countries in Europe and also here in Canada — we need to learn more about it,” Howard Njoo, deputy head of public health in Canada, said Friday. “Has it evolved? Has it changed to something else in terms of transmission and so on?”
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