The emergency committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) is holding a meeting this Thursday in Geneva to assess whether the monkeypox outbreak, which has affected more than 3,500 people in at least 42 countries in six weeks, constitutes a “ public health emergency of international concern”.
This is the highest level of alert that the body can declare, a consideration that coronavirus and polio currently have.
The declaration of the international emergency aims to increase coordination between countries and reinforce the mechanisms for the active search for cases and the implementation at the international level of measures that help curb the circulation of the virus, something that should take place in the coming weeks. .
The meeting started at 12 noon and is expected to last several hours.
According to WHO sources, the results of the meeting will be communicated at a press conference scheduled for Friday afternoon or Saturday morning and a statement will also be published at some point from tomorrow, although these forecasts may change. .
The meeting of the committee takes place in an environment of growing concern about the increase in cases registered in non-endemic areas outside of Africa, especially Europe but also America and with cases also in Asia and Oceania.
The international health alert was launched by the United Kingdom in mid-May and since then the cases have been growing in this country (793), Spain (more than 800), Germany (592), Portugal (317), France (277) , Canada (245), the Netherlands (167) and the United States (156), according to figures available this Thursday morning.
The data, however, is constantly changing as countries update their records, something that not all do at the same pace.
Antonio Alcamí, a researcher specialized in the viruses that cause the different types of smallpox at the Higher Center for Scientific Research (CSIC), considers that the declaration of an international emergency, if it is finally adopted, is justified.
“The main reason is that the virus has spread to many countries and this is the way to ensure that everyone puts the means to properly measure the scope of the outbreak.
In the current situation, it is very likely that many countries have more cases than detected, ”he states.
One of the questions that is on the table is whether the health systems are aiming well when looking for cases.
Part of the growth is due to tracing difficulties encountered by several countries, according to published studies.
The vast majority of positives are related to festivals, parties and other events in which men who have relationships with other men meet and close contact occurs, which has been revealed as the main route of infection.
Many of the patients state that they cannot identify, or prefer not to, their risk contacts.
But in recent days there have been several scientists who have been in favor of expanding the case definition, the criteria that a patient must meet in order to be tested to confirm or rule out that he is a carrier of the monkeypox virus. .
A letter published in the medical journal
The Lancet
on the 15th by a dozen scientists warned that "the current case definition would not detect the disease in a heterosexual man with the characteristic vesicles of the skin rash if he has not traveled [to an area of risk] or is a contact of a confirmed case.”
The letter highlights that this is precisely the patient profile “most common in endemic areas”.
"Many cases may be escaping us because the symptoms observed are generally milder than expected and can be confused with many other diseases," Antonio Alcamí considers.
The letter published in
The Lancet
maintains that "to untrained eyes, monkeypox can easily be confused with other diagnoses with dermatological conditions such as chickenpox, herpes zoster, herpes simplex, syphilis, gonorrhea or molluscum contagiosum."
Antonio Alcamí acknowledges that there are still several questions to be resolved when explaining the current extent of the outbreak, such as whether there are patients who can take the infection almost asymptomatically or the virus is also spread by the respiratory route.
“The epidemiological data we have so far show that the vast majority of infections have been by direct contact.
It is possible that they can also be by air, although it does not seem to be a very effective way.
The studies must now show us what percentage of infections may be occurring in this way”, concludes the CSIC researcher.