The number of smallpox cases will continue to rise over the next four weeks before starting to show signs of stabilizing early next year, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
Smallpox is a viral infection that spreads through close contact and usually causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. The disease is usually mild, but it can be fatal.
The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency in August, after a new strain of smallpox began spreading from the hard-hit Democratic Republic of Congo to neighboring countries.
“I think with this intensification of the response, we hope that after about four weeks…we should see some leveling off of the epidemic thanks to all the current investments, and then towards the end of the first quarter we will be able to see the curve bend,” Ngashi Ngongo of the Africa CDC said at a press conference.
He said surveillance of the outbreak, including contact tracing, remained a significant challenge to the response, but the Africa CDC was trying to strengthen it by deploying community health workers, epidemiologists and disease specialists. preventing infections in areas where cases of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, have been confirmed.
The lack of monitoring is also a major concern for the WHO advisory group, which said last week that it was too early to lift the public health emergency status, according to Mr. Ngongo.
The outbreak continues to represent an emergency situation due to the increase in the number of cases and their continued geographic spread, operational difficulties on the ground and the need to establish and maintain a coherent response between countries and partners, WHO said Friday.
Twenty African countries have recorded more than 59,000 cases of smallpox, including 1,164 deaths, since the start of the year, according to data from the Africa CDC.
