Most often benign, this rare disease heals spontaneously after two to three weeks, in general.
Le Monde with AFP
France had Thursday 330 confirmed cases of infection by the virus of the variole of the monkey, announced Thursday June 23 Public health France. The previous assessment on Tuesday reported 277 cases, including, for the first time, a woman. In the case of this “young woman”, the health agency said on Thursday, “the partner (not tested) reported that he had a rash three weeks before”.
known in humans since 1970, the variole of the monkey or “similar orthopoxvirosis” is much less dangerous and contagious than its cousin, the smallpox, eradicated in 1980. It is first translated as a high fever and evolves Quickly eruption, with the formation of crusts. Most often benign, it heals spontaneously after two to three weeks, in general. If it is not a sexually transmitted infection, the transmission can occur by close contact as a sexual relation.
Europe at the center of the propagation of the virus
On all the cases observed in France, there are “227 in Ile-de-France, 22 in Occitanie, 21 in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, 19 in New Aquitaine, 14 in the Hauts-de -France, 14 in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, 6 in Normandy, 3 in Brittany, 1 in Center-Val de Loire, 1 in Burgundy-Franche-Comté, 1 in Pays de la Loire and 1 in Grand-Est “, detail the health authorities. Among the cases of research objects, 77 % presented a genito-anal eruption, 73 % an eruption on another part of the body and 71 % a fever. In addition, 13 of them are immunocompromised. No patient is dead.
Until now, the current flambé of variole of the monkey, which strikes around forty countries, mainly concerns men who have had homosexual relations, without direct link with people of return from the countries of Central Africa and West Africa, where the virus usually circulates. The European region is now at the center of the virus propagation.
Tuesday, the European Commission announced the conclusion of a contract on the purchase of more than 100,000 doses of vaccines. It is inspired by grouped purchases of Vaccines against the COVVI-19 but relates to much lower quantities. Marketed under the name of Imvansne in Europe, Jynneos in the United States and Imvamune in Canada, it is a third generation vaccine (non-replicative living vaccine, that is to say, replying Not in the human organism) authorized in Europe since 2013 and indicated against smallpox in adults. The European Medicines Regulator announced in early June that it has started discussions with Bavarian Nordic, the laboratory that manufactures the vaccine, to possibly extend its use against the variolate of the monkey.
Call for transparency
Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) called the countries for vigilance and transparency in the face of a rare flambé of more cases of monkey smallpox in the world – 3,200 cases. That same day, it brought together international experts to determine whether the situation constitutes an “international health emergency of international scope”, as is the case for the COVVI-19 pandemic. The decision should not be known before the end of the week.
“WHO asks all member states to share information with us,” said WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during the meeting. “In other epidemics, we have sometimes seen the consequences of the lack of transparency in countries, the lack of information sharing,” he added. China, where the first cases of COVID-19 were reported at the end of 2019, was for example accused of having lacked transparency.