Monkeypox is a usually mild illness that spreads through close contact and can cause flu-like symptoms and pus-filled skin lesions.
The WHO is considering whether the outbreak should be assessed as a “potential public health emergency of international concern” or PHEIC.
Such a declaration, as was done for COVID-19 and Ebola, would help accelerate research and funding to contain the disease.
Asked whether this monkeypox outbreak has the potential to grow into a pandemic, Rosamund Lewis, technical lead for monkeypox from the WHO Health Emergencies Programme said: “We don’t know but we don’t think so.”
“At the moment, we are not concerned of a global pandemic,” she said.Once monkeypox has been contracted, the duration of the rash emerging and scabs falling off is recognised as the infectious period, but there is limited information on whether there is any spread of the virus by people who are not symptomatic, she added.
“We really don’t actually yet know whether there’s asymptomatic transmission of monkeypox – the indications in the past have been that this is not a major feature – but this remains to be determined,” she said.The strain of virus implicated in the outbreak is understood to kill a small fraction of those infected, but no deaths have been reported so far.
Most cases have cropped up in Europe rather than in the Central and West African countries where the virus is endemic, and are predominantly not linked to travel.
Scientists are therefore looking into what might explain this unusual surge of cases, while public health authorities suspect there is some degree of community transmission.
Some countries have begun to offer vaccines to close contacts of confirmed cases.
Meanwhile on Sunday, the WHO said that monkeypox constitutes a “moderate risk” to overall public health at global level after cases were reported in countries where the disease is not typically found.
“The public health risk could become high if this virus exploits the opportunity to establish itself as a human pathogen and spreads to groups at higher risk of severe disease such as young children and immunosuppressed persons,” WHO said.
