The World Health Organization (WHO) reported a surge in Mpox (monkeypox) instances, recording 906 new cases across 26 countries in November. This marks a 26% rise from October.

In Europe, Portugal reported 128 new cases. In the Asia region, cases increased in Singapore, while China’s cases declined. Africa reported a small decline, but the WHO said irregular reporting and high numbers of suspected cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) outbreak make it difficult to interpret the trend there.

Global Trends Reflect Unpredictable Monkeypox Outbreak

“The constantly changing geographical distribution of the cases does not allow for an accurate prediction of the regional trends, but the continued high number of cases globally highlights the fact that this outbreak is not over, and the virus continues to find pockets of susceptible individuals,” the WHO said. The group did not note any major changes in the epidemiology of the disease.

Between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2023, a total of 92,783 laboratory-confirmed cases of Mpox, including 171 deaths, have been reported to WHO from 116 countries. In the global of all reported modes of transmission outbreak, sexual encounter is the most common, comprising 17,907 of 21,561 (83.1 percent) of all reported transmission events, followed by person-to-person non-sexual contact.

The most common symptom is any rash, reported in 89.9 percent of cases, followed by fever (58.4 percent), and systemic rash or genital rash (54.3 percent and 50.2 percent, respectively).

Source-IANS