In total, 19 countries where the disease is unusual, most of them in Europe, have reported at least one confirmed case, indicates the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in an epidemiological note released on Monday evening.
Le Monde with AFP
The number of confirmed cases of variole of the monkey in the world has reached 219 outside the countries where the disease is endemic, according to a report released on Monday 23 May by the European Union agency responsible for diseases. “Most cases are young men, identifying themselves as men with sex with men. There were no deaths,” said the European agency based in Stockholm.
Outside the 11 African countries where this rare disease is endemic, three countries are currently concentrating most of the confirmed cases: the United Kingdom, the first country where unusual cases were spotted in early May (71 cases), the ‘Spain (51) and Portugal (37), according to the ECDC. Europe concentrates most of the cases with 191 cases, including 118 in the EU countries. Canada (15), the United States (9), Australia (2), Israel (1) and the United Arab Emirates (1) are the six non-European countries with cases considered to be confirmed. Suspected cases are not counted in the balance sheet.
The total number of cases listed on Monday by the ECDC has practically quintuplely since its first pointing of May 20, where the agency counted 38 cases. On Monday, in its first risk assessment, the ECDC, however, considered that the probability of contagion in the general population was “very low” but that it was however “high” in people with several sexual partners. On the same day, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed an “atypical” situation but deemed possible to “stop” this transmission of the disease between humans.
The disease, a less dangerous cousin of the variola eradicated for around forty years, is endemic in 11 countries in West Africa and Central Africa. It is first translated as a high fever and evolves quickly in the skin, with the formation of crusts.