(Reuters) – The World Health Organization doesn’t have evidence that the monkeypox virus has mutated, a senior govt on the U.N. company mentioned on Monday, noting the infectious illness that’s endemic in west and central Africa has tended to not change.
Rosamund Lewis, head of the smallpox secretariat which is a part of the WHO Emergencies Programme, advised a briefing that mutations are sometimes decrease with this virus, though genome sequencing of instances will assist inform understanding of the present outbreak.
The greater than 100 suspected and confirmed instances within the latest outbreak in Europe and North America haven’t been extreme, the WHO’s rising ailments and zoonoses lead and technical lead on COVID-19, Maria van Kerkhove, mentioned.
“This is a containable state of affairs,” she mentioned.
The outbreaks are atypical, based on the WHO, as they’re occurring in nations the place the virus doesn’t repeatedly flow into. Scientists are searching for to know the origin of the instances and whether or not something concerning the virus has modified.
(Reporting by Josephine Mason in London; modifying by John Stonestreet and Ed Osmond)
