The UN health agency first declared the so-called PHEIC -- its highest level of alarm -- on July 23, and the experts said that while some progress had been made in reining in the disease, it was too soon to declare the emergency over.
Global health bodies have counted far fewer cases in Africa during the current outbreak than in Europe and the United States, which snapped up the limited number of vaccines this year when the illness arrived at their shores.
Since monkeypox suddenly started spreading across the world in May, more than 73,000 cases and 29 deaths have been recorded in over 100 countries, the World Health Organization said this week.
The two new cases have been identified as community transmissions where the disease has been transmitted within New Zealand as opposed to all other cases where the individuals were infected overseas, said a joint statement of the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand,
The scientists, drawing analogies to HIV (the forerunner of which arose in African monkeys), urge caution: The global health community might potentially avoid another pandemic by monitoring for arteriviruses in both animals and humans now, scientists suggested.
The disease's spread is slowing but the virus is so widespread that elimination is unlikely, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That conclusion was in a recent CDC report and echoed Friday by Marc Lipsitch, director of science in the agency's disease-forecasting centre.
There is no scientifically conclusive data available to prove the effectiveness of the Jynneos vaccine against monkeypox. But the CDC's new real-world figures show that unvaccinated men, between the ages 18 and 49 who were considered eligible for the vaccine, were 14 times as likely to become infected with monkeypox as those who had one dose at least two weeks earlier.
California accounts for the highest number, with 4,886 cases, followed by New York (3,881), Florida (2,455), Texas (2,292), Georgia (1,773) and Illinois (1,300), according to the CDC data.
According to doctors, two Nigerians, including a woman, tested positive for the virus on Friday. Both are 25 years old and live in west Delhi. The man came back to India three months ago while the woman returned just a month ago from Africa.
The preventive vaccination logistics strategy will be managed at the level of each region, after identifying eligible citizens in a specialist consultation," said the health authority
California had the most confirmed cases among US states so far, with 4,656 cases, followed by New York with 3,755 and Florida with 2,398, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the CDC data.
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