The decision to classify the spread of monkeypox as an international health emergency was made after the WHO called an extraordinary meeting on Saturday.
Despite a dissenting expert committee, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he acted as the final vote on raising the classification.
According to the AP news agency, it is the first time that a director of the WHO has made such a decision on his own without a unanimous group of experts.
— It illustrates that it is difficult to assess and that many are unsure whether it really is a global emergency, says Anders Sönnerborg, professor of clinical virology and infectious diseases at the Karolinska Institutet, to TT.
Received criticism for corona
He sees today’s decision in part as a way for the WHO and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to be proactive.
— Based on the criticism it has been subjected to, of being too slow with the coronavirus, lessons have been learned from that situation. Then he wants to sue the creek.
— The WHO’s action is to send out a signal, both to the public but also support to the various infection control organizations in different countries so that it does not get worse.
In total, over 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been detected in 75 countries and five deaths have been reported. Anders Sönnerborg sees the emergency classification as more connected to the situation in Africa, where the situation is different compared to the West and Europe.
— In Africa, there have been larger monkeypox outbreaks before, but not of this dignity. As you have a larger number of patients with HIV who do not have treatment and are immunodeficient and that group can naturally become seriously ill. So the WHO’s decision can also be seen from that perspective.
Does not change the Sweden mode
According to the latest figure from the Public Health Agency (FHM), 77 cases of the infection have been confirmed in Sweden and since May the virus has been classified as a public health disease.
From a Swedish perspective, the decision from the WHO changes nothing, says Sönnerborg.
— It can be unpleasant to get, but there is no risk of getting seriously ill unless you have a severely weakened immune system. FHM has taken measures and as I see it, everything is manageable.
In those countries where monkeypox does not normally occur, no infected person has died. The transmission of the virus in the vast majority of cases has taken place via sexual contacts between men who have sex with men, and Anders Sönnerborg therefore sees it as unlikely that it would turn into a wider spread of infection and an epidemic.
— There are several reasons for that, including because monkeypox is a dna virus, unlike the coronavirus, which is an rns virus. The DNA virus does not mutate nearly as much, that is a huge difference.
— There is no reason at all to believe that the monkeypox virus would lead to a situation like the coronavirus. It is completely out of the question. So my message is that you don’t need to feel any anxiety.