Monkeypox Virus Hasn’t Mutated, Can Be Contained In Non-Endemic Countries: WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday said there was no evidence yet to support that the monkeypox virus had mutated.

A senior official of the global health body said the infectious disease that was endemic in west and central Africa had tended not to change.

WHO’s emerging diseases lead Maria Van Kerkhove said the outbreaks in non-endemic countries can be contained and human-to-human transmission of the virus stopped.

“We want to stop human-to-human transmission. We can do this in the non-endemic countries… This is a containable situation,” Kerkhove said during a live interaction on the UN health agency’s social media channels.

The more than 100 suspected and confirmed cases in the recent outbreak in Europe and North America had not yet been severe, Kerkhove added.

Rosamund Lewis, head of the smallpox secretariat, part of the WHO Emergencies Programme, said mutations were typically lower with this virus, although genome sequencing of cases would help in the understanding of the current outbreak.

According to the health agency, the outbreaks were atypical as they were occurring in countries where the virus did not regularly circulate.

Scientists were seeking to understand the origin of the cases and whether anything about the virus had changed.

Meanwhile, the European Union said the risk of monkeypox spreading widely was ‘very low’, but high for certain groups. Over 100 cases were reported from some European nations, besides the United States, Canada and Australia.

“Most of the current cases have presented with mild disease symptoms, and for the broader population, the likelihood of spread is very low,” ECDC director Andrea Ammon said, adding that the likelihood of further spread through close contact among persons with multiple sexual partners was considered “high”.