In South Africa, disease specialists feel that a widespread monkeypox vaccination effort is unnecessary and that cases will not explode in the same manner as COVID-19 did.
Monkeypox, a relatively mild viral illness that is widespread in portions of West and Central Africa, has not been confirmed or suspected on the African continent in recent years.
However, when more than 200 suspected and confirmed cases of the virus were found in at least 19 countries since early May, including Spain, Israel, and the United States, its health officials are on high alert.
On Wednesday Adrian Puren, executive director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in South Africa, said “At this time we don’t need mass vaccinations for monkeypox. There’s a lot for us to investigate on the epidemiological point of view.”
According to Jacqueline Weyer of the NICD’s Centre for Emerging, Zoonotic, and Parasitic Diseases, the monkeypox epidemic outside of Africa has “nothing strange, nothing that we haven’t seen before,” “except that it’s now happening in a different place.”
Monkeypox isn’t quite as contagious as the virus that causes COVID-19, she said.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), it expects to see more instances of monkeypox as monitoring is expanded in places where the illness is uncommon.
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SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
