Risk of monkeypox spreading widely 'very low', says EU

STOCKHOLM, May 23 (AFP): The EU health agency ECDC said Monday the risk that the rare disease monkeypox would spread widely among the general population was "very low", though high for certain groups.
"Most of the current cases have presented with mild disease symptoms, and for the broader population, the likelihood of spread is very low," Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in a statement.
"However, the likelihood of further spread of the virus through close contact, for example during sexual activities among persons with multiple sexual partners, is considered to be high," she added.
Meanwhile report from Geneva adds: The monkeypox outbreaks in non-endemic countries can be contained and human-to-human transmission of the virus stopped, the World Health Organization said Monday.
"We want to stop human-to-human transmission. We can do this in the non-endemic countries... This is a containable situation," the WHO's emerging diseases lead Maria Van Kerkhove told a live interaction on the UN health agency's social media channels.
Report from Tokyo adds: The United States has enough vaccines to deal with a potential outbreak of monkeypox and "extra efforts" are not needed to prevent its spread, President Joe Biden said on Monday.
Biden was asked if Americans could expect to see weeks-long quarantines for people infected with monkeypox after several cases were detected this month in North America and Europe.
"No, I don't think so. Look, we've had this monkeypox in larger numbers in the past," he said at a press conference in Tokyo after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
As of May 21, the World Health Organization has received reports of 92 laboratory-confirmed monkeypox cases and 28 suspected cases from 12 countries where the disease is not endemic, including several European nations, the United States, Australia and Canada.