The World Health Organization (WHO) assured on Tuesday that the epidemic of monkey pox that is raging around the world is not linked to animals. She lamented that primates could have been attacked in Brazil.
“People need to know that the transmission we’re seeing now is between humans,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a regular press briefing in Geneva. She was being questioned about reports of attacks on monkeys in Brazil.
The Brazilian news site G1 reported that a dozen primates were poisoned and some injured in less than a week in a nature reserve in Rio do Preto, in the state of São Paulo.
Others were stoned or chased or poisoned in different Brazilian cities, according to G1, which quotes the association for the fight against illegal wildlife trafficking Renctas.
Close contacts
Brazil has more than 1,700 cases of monkeypox and one death, according to WHO statistics. Worldwide, more than 28,100 cases and 12 deaths have been reported.
The term sign pox was used when this virus was discovered in 1958 in monkeys in a laboratory in Denmark, but the virus has been demonstrated in different animal species, especially rodents. The first human case was detected in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
This virus can be transmitted from animals to humans, but the recent explosion in cases around the world is due to transmission between humans during close contact, said Ms Harris. The group most affected by the epidemic is that of men who have sex with men.
The most common symptoms of monkeypox are fever, muscle aches, loss of energy, and swollen lymph nodes, followed or accompanied by a rash.
/ATS