More than 550 Monkeypox cases reported in 30 countries – WHO

SWITZERLAND: The World Health Organisation is now counting more than 550 monkeypox cases worldwide, the group’s technical lead for monkeypox, Rosamund Lewis, said Tuesday on CNN International.

“We actually have today a count of over 550 confirmed cases in 30 countries across four of WHO’s six regions,” Lewis said.

“What we’re seeing now is really quite different,” she said, given that the outbreak is happening in multiple places at once.

“We’re seeing cases all appearing in a relatively short period of time. We’re seeing that in a few days, in a couple of weeks, we’re seeing over 500 cases. This is different. This has not been seen before.”

In an update over the weekend, WHO said that as of Thursday, it had received reports of 257 confirmed Monkeypox cases and about 120 suspected cases in 23 nations where the virus is not endemic.

Lewis said WHO does not know the source of the outbreak and called on countries to take advantage of the “window of opportunity” to keep cases from unfolding into a greater outbreak.

The group said that the global public health risk level is moderate, “considering this is the first time that Monkeypox cases and clusters are reported concurrently in widely disparate WHO geographical areas, and without known epidemiological links to non-endemic countries in West or Central Africa.” – CNN