Drexcitement about monkey pox Meanwhile, infection rates are dropping. But the outbreak is far from over. Since the start of the year, 109 countries have reported more than 78,000 cases, and Germany now ranks sixth on the list with about 3,670 infections, just ahead of Peru and Colombia, followed by the United States and Brazil (28,650 and 9,260 cases) before Spain. France and Great Britain. One The current study In the “British Medical Journal” it also now presents new evidence to suspect that infected people are already contagious before they develop their first symptoms, which explains the dynamics that have occurred globally.
The outbreak observed since May was World Health Organization on 23 July 2022 as a “health emergency with international implications” when numbers rose rapidly – in countries where the pathogen was not yet endemic, but could become. For the British study, 2,746 patients who tested positive were questioned in detail, and the data of contacts and the course of the disease were assessed in Great Britain, where the epidemic peaked on July 9.
The team, led by Thomas Ward and Christopher Overton of the UK’s Health Security Agency, used various model calculations to statistically evaluate the data. The results indicate a mean incubation time of 7.6 or 7.8 days (range 6.5 to 9.9 days) before the first signs are observed, and a relatively long infectious phase. In order to detect and protect 95 percent of those who may become infected, a period of isolation of 16 to 23 days after contact will be necessary. Remarkably short “sequence periods” indicated that infected people appeared to have already transmitted viruses to others even before symptoms appeared.
In Germany, the weekly answer number Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Berlin has been declining since August, and fewer than 20 cases were reported per week in October. The RKI continues to assess the risks to the health of the general population in Germany as low. In this outbreak, transmission occurs primarily through close physical contact, often in the context of sexual activity, particularly in men who have sexual contact with other men. So far, only 19 cases involving women have been reported, along with three cases of male adolescents and two cases of children under 14 years of age. The average age of infected people in Great Britain, for example, is 37 years, while in endemic countries in Africa, early outbreaks mostly affected young people: in 2016, the average age of those infected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was ten years, in In 2020, 58 percent of those infected are under six years old.
More hacks and grow up
But scientists reported Thursday at the annual meeting of the “American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene” that the number of people infected with monkeypox is much higher than previously thought. This is indicated by analyzing samples from a remote area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It probably won’t be long before such small local outbreaks develop into larger epidemics. There was also evidence that, among other things, a viral strain circulating there leads to acute cycles more often than the strain currently circulating around the world.
Researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Kinshasa College of Public Health and the Congolese Ministry of Public Health based their report on data on 1,463 cases that occurred in Tshwaba province between 2013 and 2017 that were confirmed to be infected. in the laboratory. They determined the relevant copy number, the R-value, which increased in the region from 0.3 to 0.5 in the 1980s to 0.81. Bigger eruptions are becoming more likely.
The researchers also hypothesize that “fallouts” occur regularly and frequently. People become infected from rodents, which are a natural reservoir for these pathogens. Children are usually at the beginning of the chain of infection and then in turn infect other members of their family. The CDC epidemiologist Kelly Charnega, who specializes in infectious diseases, warns that the more often this happens, the greater the chances of the pathogen eventually spreading through person-to-person transmission alone. More attention and assistance must now be given to those regions that suffer the most from other infectious diseases today. People are more likely to get monkeypox and sometimes die. This is the best way to prevent “monkeypox from causing more outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – and turning into a larger global problem”.
