The government takes the issue “very seriously”. The UK is registering new cases of monkeypox every day, an official at the UK Health Security Agency said on Sunday.
“We are discovering more cases every day,” UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) chief medical officer Susan Hopkins told the BBC. Twenty patients were identified last week and a new report “with the weekend numbers” will be released on Monday, she said.
“The vast majority of people heal on their own”
Several European countries have identified cases of monkeypox that could be accelerating in Europe, a regional World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Friday. “In the cases we’ve seen in the UK so far, the vast majority of people recover on their own,” said Susan Hopkins.
She described monkeypox as “a new infectious disease spreading in our community” with “cases having no identified contact with an individual from West Africa” where the disease was previously present.
An “extremely low” risk for the population
Transmission is “observed primarily in individuals who identify as gay or bisexual, or in men who have sex with men,” she said, noting that transmission is explained by “frequent contact, however close they may be.” can be”.
She called for attention to the smallest symptom and emphasized that the risk to the population as a whole was “extremely low”. While there is no monkeypox vaccine that is self-healing, a smallpox vaccine can be used to protect contact cases, explained Dr. Hopkins. Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi told the same TV channel that the government was taking the matter “very, very seriously” and that the UK had started buying doses of smallpox vaccine.