At a press briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, earlier this week (August 20, 2024), Dr. Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Director for Europe, said that the risk from mpox to the general population in Europe was “low.” 

“We know how to control mpox, and in the European region,  the steps needed to eliminate its transmission altogether,” he said in an August 20, 2024, press statement. 

Earlier this month (August 2024), WHO declared the recent mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) outbreak in Africa a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) as a new strain (clade) of the virus spreads. In an August 14, 2024 statement, WHO’s Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had determined that the upsurge of mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a growing number of countries in Africa constitutes a PHEIC under international health regulations. Dr. Tedros’s declaration came on the advice of WHO’s  International Health Regulation Emergency Committee, composed of independent experts, who met earlier to review data presented by experts from WHO and affected countries. The Committee informed the Director-General that it considers the upsurge of mpox to be a PHEIC, with potential to spread further across countries in Africa and possibly outside the continent. 

This PHEIC determination is the second in two years relating to mpox. Caused by an orthopoxvirus, mpox was first detected in humans in 1970, in the DRC. The disease is considered endemic to countries in central and west Africa. In July 2022, a multi-country outbreak of mpox was declared a PHEIC as it spread rapidly via sexual contact across a range of countries where the virus had not been seen before. That PHEIC was declared over in May 2023 after there had been a sustained decline in global cases. 

Mpox has been reported in the DRC for more than a decade, and the number of cases reported each year has increased steadily over that period, according to WHO. Last year (2023), WHO said that the reported cases increased “significantly.” The DRC has reported more than 15,600 mpox cases so far this year (2024) and some 540 deaths, according to information from the United Nations. WHO is an agency of the United Nations.  

However, in commenting on mpox spread in Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO’s Regional Director for Europe, said the recent mpox outbreak in Africa and the COVID-19 pandemic were not comparable “regardless of whether it’s mpox Clade 1, behind the ongoing outbreak in east-central Africa, or mpox Clade 2, behind the 2022 outbreak that initially impacted Europe and has continued to circulate in Europe since.”  

Current scientific knowledge about the virus indicates that it primarily transmits through skin-to-skin contact with mpox lesions, including during sex. Dr. Kluge said “no” to a question about whether Europe would experience COVID-like lockdowns due to the mpox outbreak.  

Speaking via video link from Copenhagen, Dr. Kluge recalled that the 2022 European mpox outbreak was brought under control, citing “behavior change, non-discriminatory public health action, and mpox vaccination” as factors of success in Europe in 2022. However, the region “failed to go the last mile” to quash the disease and is currently seeing some 100 new mpox Clade 2 cases every month,” he said. 

Earlier this month (August 2024), Sweden became the first country outside Africa to record a case of the mpox Clade 1 variant at the center of the latest outbreak, which has been spreading from the DRC in Africa to neighboring countries. The Swedish case concerned a person who had traveled to an affected area of Africa. The current state of alert due to Clade 1, which is considered to be more severe, gives European health authorities the opportunity to also strengthen focus on Clade 2 and eliminate it “once and for all,” Dr. Kluge said.  

Source: United Nations