The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed over 3,400 reported cases of monkeypox and one related death globally as of last Wednesday.
The WHO said that 1,310 new cases were reported to the UN health agency since June 17, with eight new countries reporting monkeypox cases.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was deeply concerned about the outbreak. The WHO also acknowledged there were many unknowns about the outbreak.
“I am deeply concerned about the monkeypox outbreak, this is clearly an evolving health threat that my colleagues and I in the WHO Secretariat are following extremely closely,” Tedros said in a statement.
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“The majority of laboratory-confirmed cases (2933/3413; 86%) were reported from the WHO European Region. Other regions reporting cases include: the African Region (73/3413, 2%), Region of the Americas (381/3413, 11%), Eastern Mediterranean Region (15/3413, <1%) and Western Pacific Region (11/3413, <1%). One death was reported in Nigeria in the second quarter of 2022.”
“WHO continues to closely monitor the situation, and support international coordination and information sharing with the Member States and partners. Clinical and public health incident response has been activated by the Member States to coordinate comprehensive case finding, contact tracing, laboratory investigation, isolation, clinical management and implementation of infection and prevention and control measures. Genomic sequencing of viral deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the monkeypox virus found in the current outbreak is ongoing, where available; preliminary data from polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays indicate that the monkeypox virus genes detected belong to the West African clade.”-says WHO.
