“When you have 17,000 cases spread over 70 countries like today, that calls for special attention”
Dr. Michel Thieren, special representative of the WHO in Israel, was this Sunday the guest of Prime, in order to explain why the World Health Organization has decided to apply its maximum alert level to the virus of the monkeypox, now calling it a pandemic.
“What’s worrying regarding monkeypox is that we don’t quite understand what’s going on,” Dr Thieren said. “We are facing an extraordinary situation which has nothing comparable to the Covid-19 pandemic because it is not the same pathology, nor the same family of viruses, nor the same transmission,” he said. he clarified, indicating that patient zero had not been identified to date.
The doctor attached to the WHO noted that many questions remained unanswered to this day, and in particular the fact of knowing how this virus might have passed from Africa to Europe. “Is this the effect of a mutation of the virus, or the consequence of changes in behavior following the pandemic, or even the result of an importation? We cannot say at the moment. But whatever Either way, when you have 17,000 cases spread across 70 countries like today, it calls for special attention,” he said.
According to the expert, the fact that this disease which was known in Africa is spreading throughout the world thus requires increased vigilance on the technical, scientific and political levels. “This is the message that the WHO wanted to send by triggering its highest level of alert for monkeypox. It wants to create awareness and mobilization so that this virus is not caught in the dark. light,” he explained.
Because if the mortality, the hospitalization rates as well as the rate of epidemic attack remain low with this virus, “this one is still part of the orthopoxviruses, a family not very recommendable”, underlines the doctor.
Three population groups, considered at risk for this disease, should benefit from vaccines as a priority: homosexuals who concentrate 90% to 95% of cases, health personnel in contact with patients and laboratory employees who carry out tests.
Israel, which has 114 cases of monkeypox so far, doubled its order of vaccines from the Bavarian Nordic laboratory on Saturday to 5,000, while 5,000 more doses are expected to follow.