“Strategic vaccination” efforts will target people at the highest risk such as “close contacts of recent cases and healthcare workers, to interrupt transmission chains,” the agency said.
The WHO plan will focus on “implementing comprehensive surveillance, prevention, readiness, and response strategies; advancing research and equitable access to medical countermeasures like diagnostic tests and vaccines; minimizing animal-to-human transmission; and empowering communities to actively participate in outbreak prevention and control,” according to a statement.
Officials say that a subvariant of the virus has caused global concern because it seems to spread more easily through routine close contact.
“Doing so requires a comprehensive and coordinated plan of action between international agencies and national and local partners, civil society, researchers and manufacturers, and our Member States,” he said.
More Cases Confirmed Outside Africa
The Philippines has confirmed two more mpox virus infections of the milder Clade II variety, its health ministry said on Aug. 26, bringing the number of active cases to three.“We continue to see local transmission of mpox Clade II here in the Philippines, in Metro Manila in particular,” Secretary of Health Teodoro Herbosa said in a statement.
He added that newly confirmed cases were a 37-year-old male in Metro Manila who had a rash on his body and was brought to a government hospital and a 32-year-old male from the capital who had lesions on his skin.
The Philippines announced last week that it had detected a case of the mpox virus’s milder variant in a 33-year-old male who had no travel history outside the Philippines.
The Philippines has had 12 laboratory-confirmed cases since July 2022. The World Health Organization earlier this month declared mpox a global public health emergency, its highest form of alert, for the second time in two years, because of an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo that had spread to neighboring countries.
The disease leads to flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. It is usually mild but can be fatal. Children, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems, such as those with HIV, are all at higher risk of complications.
Other countries outside the African continent that have confirmed mpox cases in recent days include Sweden and Thailand.
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