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Children and adolescents are disproportionally affected by mpox in the ongoing outbreak in Africa, highlighting the importance and urgency to broaden the access to vaccines and therapies for this vulnerable population,
said Paul Chaplin, Bavarian Nordic’s CEO We are not dealing with one outbreak of one clade; we are dealing with several outbreaks of different clades in different countries with different modes of transmission and different levels of risk,
said the WHO director-general in his opening address at the emergency committee meeting late Wednesday The current upsurge of mpox in parts of Africa, along with the spread of a new sexually transmissible strain of the monkeypox virus, is an emergency, not only for Africa, but for the entire globe,
said Dimie Ogoina, WHO's mpox emergency committee chair We must prevent the DRC from becoming the source of cross-border transmission, and our partnership must prioritize the health of those affected,
said Jean Kaseya, director-general of CDC Africa, at the meeting We are working tirelessly on the front lines of the response, collaborating closely with governments and communities to strengthen disease control measures and intensify our efforts to curb the spread of the virus through coordinated action with partners and national authorities,
said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, in a statement on Thursday It is time to act decisively to prevent history from repeating itself,
Just like in any infectious disease response, we need to know who is sick so these people do not infect other people. So testing and surveillance is the key,
said WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic Canada has been closely working with our international partners. At the moment, we're waiting to see specifically what is being asked,
Vaccination will be a critical element of the response to this outbreak,
said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in a statement We're talking about a new, what we call sub-lineage of one of the types, and it's called clade Ib and it's showing quite a different behaviour than some of the other types of this virus,
said Doctors Without Borders infectious disease specialist Aula Abbara We've been doing wastewater monitoring… and so far, we have not detected clade I in Canada to date, but that could change,
said Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam We really still need to be vigilant. We need to study any cases that might arise,
If we don't try and get things contained on the ground… we inevitably are going to have to over-invest in response efforts when these types of outbreaks escalate. And certainly we run the risk of seeing potential introduction more broadly,
As we got through the eradication of smallpox, mpox picked up in the background,
he said in an interview with CTV Morning Live on Thursday We have to appreciate though that the longer that we let clade I to run unabated in Central Africa, the greater the risk is for further geographic expansion,
However, planning is underway to prepare for any cases that we might see in the UK
This clade Ib is spreading predominantly through intimate and sexual contact and so could well spread rapidly to areas around the world,
There is further concern about the lack of access to vaccines and a globally slow response to vaccine production and distribution. Even though there are existing effective vaccines, there are not enough doses and they are not being getting to where they are needed."
There are multiple outbreaks happening at present,
Jonas Albarnaz, a research fellow specializing in pox viruses at The Pirbright Institute, a research institute in England for the study of infectious disease, said in a statement The situation is concerning because of the spread of the clade 1b virus, which is considered to cause more severe disease, and because there are many children being infected in DRC during this new outbreak,
Brian Ferguson, an associate professor of immunology at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement