The World Health Organization (WHO), has raised an alarm over the rapid increase of monkeypox cases.
WHO spokeswoman, Fadela Chaib, while speaking to journalists in Geneva, said 5,322 laboratory-confirmed cases of monkeypox had been reported to it in the current outbreak.
The United Nations health agency is yet to fix a date for its emergency committee on monkeypox to convene for a second meeting.
The number has increased by 56 percent in eight days. The previous figure given by the WHO, was 3,413 cases with 85 percent of it in Europe.
A surge in monkeypox cases has been reported since early May outside the West and Central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.
Chaib said infections had now been reported in 53 countries.
“Eighty-five percent of cases are in Europe, followed by the African region, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Pacific,” she said.
“The WHO continues to ask countries to pay particular attention to monkeypox cases to try to stop further infections.”
On June 23, the UN health agency convened an emergency committee of experts to decide if monkeypox constitutes a so-called Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) — the highest alarm that the WHO can sound.
The WHO’s 16-member emergency committee on monkeypox is chaired by Jean-Marie Okwo-Bele from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who is a former director of the WHO’s Vaccines and Immunisation Department.
But a majority found the situation had not yet crossed that threshold.
Most monkeypox infections so far have been observed in men who have sex with men, of young age and chiefly in urban areas, according to the WHO.
The normal initial symptoms of monkeypox include a high fever, swollen lymph nodes and a blistery chickenpox-like rash.
