The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged pharmaceutical companies to increase vaccine production, and China is preparing to test travelers for monkeypox after a more dangerous variant of the virus was first detected outside Africa in Sweden and Pakistan.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said his country was on the “highest level of alert” and would introduce new recommendations for those traveling to risk areas.
Monkeypox is caused by a virus transmitted from animals to humans, but the disease can spread between humans through close physical contact.
Symptoms include fever, muscle aches and a rash.
WHO declared a global public health emergency on Wednesday due to the rapid spread of the type I (Clade 1b) monkeypox virus.
This was done after a more dangerous type of virus began to spread from the Democratic Republic of Congo to other African countries.
The WHO has also called for more vaccines to be produced against the disease, and for countries with stockpiles of vaccines to share them with countries where outbreaks have been reported.
The US intends to transfer 50,000 doses of the vaccine to the Democratic Republic of Congo, while France will send the vaccine to countries facing the risk of the virus.
The Danish pharmaceutical company “Bavarian Nordic” announced on Thursday that it can produce 10 million vaccine doses by 2025, but this requires contracts.
The Stockholm-based European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said the risk to Europe was low, but warned that effective surveillance, laboratory and epidemiological testing and contact tracing capacity would be important to identify cases.
However, ECDC Director Pamela Rendi-Wagner said that because of the close links between Europe and Africa, Europe needs to prepare for more imported cases of monkeypox type I.
2024-08-17 18:44:31