Vaccination is the most effective protection against monkeypox, he said Info radiofor Miklós Rusvai. The European Union and its member states recently announced that they are donating 580,000 doses of vaccine to the affected African states in order to curb monkeypox. According to the virologist, in Europe, like this
An epidemic cannot be expected in Hungary either, but there will certainly be imported cases.
Monkey pox can only be protected with vaccines, there is no medicine for it, it can only be prevented with vaccinations, explained Miklós Rusvai. The virus researcher also emphasized that protection should be taken where the epidemic is currently taking very heavy victims, because this way it could be prevented from possibly spreading to other countries. An important step for this was that the World Health Organization, WHO classified the increase in the number of cases of monkeypox as an epidemiological emergency, because vaccine shipments can only be offered if this emergency exists.
There have been 48,000 suspected cases in more than nineteen African countries, and more than a thousand people have died, but these numbers are likely to rise.
According to Miklós Rusvai, there are two obstacles to suppressing the spread of the disease with vaccinations. One is that the vaccine is expensive, so the offer so far is not enough, because hundreds of millions of people live in the affected region, Central Africa. Another difficulty is that the vaccine must also be delivered to the target, but civil wars are common in these countries, and the central power is limited to only certain areas of the countries. In addition, corruption is very strong, the free vaccine is often sold for money, and it becomes inaccessible to the hardest-living, often tribal communities, he added.
For this reason, according to the virus researcher, one can only hope that the vaccination will be effective and that the epidemic will be suppressed, because this year
compared to previous years, the number of cases has increased enormously, and what is really worrying is that this is now the more serious version of monkeypox.
Miklós Rusvai recalled that in 2022 monkeypox appeared on all five continents, but it was only a “warning shot” because the mild version was spreading, with 200 deaths out of 100,000 cases, which means a mortality rate of 0.02 percent.
The current version, on the other hand, can result in a death rate of up to ten percent.
– The epidemic two years ago was good for drawing the attention of doctors, especially dermatologists, to this disease on all continents. The doctors are prepared, we also had eighty cases two years ago, our doctors are also prepared – said Miklós Rusvai, and indicated that it is also important that people are already aware of the danger when they travel to the Central African region. The expert does not consider it justified for European countries to introduce border closures, because so far this year in Europe there have been two cases of each type of monkeypox, which causes a more serious disease: one in Sweden and one in Germany, but all were imported cases.
The difficulty is recognition, because two weeks pass before the typical symptoms appear, and the patient can be infected until then, but if the symptoms have already developed, they are very characteristic, so the authorities can start contact tracing and vaccinate acquaintances who have been in contact with the infected person. relatives.
Local, accumulated infections can occur within a family or community, but I don’t think there will be a large number of cases here in Europe
said Miklós Rusvai.
Source: magyarnemzet.hu
