The World Health Organization has no evidence that the monkeypox virus has mutated, the UN chief said on Monday, noting that the infectious disease, which is endemic in West and Central Africa, tends to remain unchanged.
Rosamund Lewis, head of the smallpox secretariat, which is part of the WHO emergency program, said at the briefing that mutations tend to be lower with the virus, although a sequence of genome cases will help understand the current outbreak.
More than 100 suspicious and confirmed cases of the recent outbreak in Europe and North America have not been severe, said Maria van Kerchowe on WHO’s new diseases and zoonoses, as well as the COVID-19 technical guide.
“It’s a restrained situation,” she said.
According to the WHO, outbreaks are atypical because they occur in countries where the virus does not circulate regularly. Scientists are trying to understand the origin of the cases and whether anything has changed in the virus.
