A senior WHO official said that the organization does not believe that the outbreak of monkeypox outside Africa calls for mass vaccination campaigns, as other measures such as good personal hygiene and safe sexual behavior will contribute to controlling its spread.
“The immediate supply of vaccines and antivirals is relatively limited,” Richard Peabody, who leads the High-Threat Pathogens Team at the World Health Organization in Europe, explained in an interview with “Reuters”.
Peabody’s comments came as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it is in the process of releasing doses of the (Genius) vaccine for use with cases of monkeypox.
On Monday, the German government said it was studying the options available in relation to vaccinations, and Britain has given vaccinations to its health care workers.
Public health authorities in Europe and North America are checking more than 100 suspected or confirmed cases of viral infection in the worst outbreak of the virus outside Africa, where it is endemic.
According to Peabody, the basic measures to control the outbreak of the disease are to trace and isolate contact, noting that it does not spread very easily and has not yet caused the emergence of a serious disease.
He added that the vaccines used to combat monkeypox may carry some serious side effects.
The cause of the outbreak is not clear, as scientists are trying to understand the source of the cases and whether anything has changed in the virus.
On Monday, Rosamund Lewis, director of the smallpox emergency program at the World Health Organization, said the organization had no evidence that the monkeypox virus had mutated.
