Guinea-Conakry announced today its first confirmed case of mpox, on the same day that the director-general of the World Health Organization warned that vaccines alone will not solve the problem.
The confirmation of the first case in the neighboring country of Guinea-Bissau came after an emergency meeting of the Health Ministry on Tuesday, according to the French news agency, La France-Presse (AFP), with Guinea-Conakry becoming the 14th country in Africa to record the disease.
"Tuesday's meeting was used by the National Health Security Agency (ANSS) to present the preparedness and response plan, accompanied by a budget," the statement said.
"It has been confirmed that the first case was discovered in the sub-prefecture of Koyamma, in the prefecture of Macenta, in the forest region," a Health Ministry official told AFP, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
In Africa, the epidemic is now present in 14 countries, updated today with the announcement of Guinea-Conakry, with emphasis on the DR Congo, but also Burundi (796 cases), Congo-Brazzaville (162 cases) and the Central African Republic (45 cases), according to data from the Africa CDC on August 27.
The resurgence of mpox on the continent and the appearance of a new variant (clade 1b) led the WHO to activate its highest global alert level in mid-August and is worrying authorities in several countries, particularly in Burundi, a country where cases are growing significantly.
Regarding the cases detected in Burundi, "the most worrying thing is that they are spread throughout the country", said today the head of the Emerging Diseases Unit of the World Health Organization, Maria Van Kerkhove, quoted by the Spanish news agency, Efe.
At a press conference, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed that vaccines will arrive in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday and that the vaccination campaign will begin over the weekend, but said that vaccination against mpox in the country, where more than 18,000 cases and at least 629 deaths have been reported this year, is only one part of the response plan.
"Vaccines alone will not stop the outbreak, so we are working to strengthen surveillance, combat misinformation and engage communities more," said the WHO leader.
On August 14, the United Nations health organization declared the second international emergency of mpox due to the rapid spread of the new strain of the virus that has already been confirmed in countries such as Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Sweden and Thailand.
Mpox is a viral disease that spreads from animals to humans, but is also transmitted between humans, causing fever, muscle pain and skin lesions.
Also today, the director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) revealed that the risk to the population of European Union (EU) countries "is low" and assured that Mpox is not the next pandemic.
"One thing needs to be clarified, Mpox is not the next Covid-19", assured Pamela Rendi-Wagner, during a hearing at the European Parliament's Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, in Brussels.
Acknowledging that "the size of the outbreak in Africa could be much larger", due to a lack of credible information, the director of the ECDC maintained that the Mpox and SARS-CoV-2 viruses "spread in different ways, have completely different risks and there is also an effective vaccine" for Mpox.
"This was not the case in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic began," he concluded.
