The World Health Organization has not, so far, evidence that the monkeypox virus has mutated, a senior United Nations agency official said Monday, noting that the infectious disease endemic in west and central Africa tends not to diversify.
Rosamund Lewis[/B], head of smallpox, part of the WHO's emergency programme, said in a briefing that mutations are usually fewer for this virus, although genome sequencing of cases will help in understanding the current outbreak. "We can say that it is a DNA virus, it is one of the largest, if not the largest known virus. It has a much lower mutation rate than RNA viruses, it is a very stable virus. We have no evidence yet that there is mutation of the virus itself," he said.
Most of the 100 suspected and confirmed cases of the recent outbreak in Europe and North America were not serious, WHO's head of emerging diseases and zoonoses, Maria van Kerkov, meanwhile, said.
"This is a situation that can be controlled, especially in the countries where we see the epidemic spreading in Europe," she said, explaining that transmission of the virus "can be stopped" in countries where it is not endemic.
Scientists are trying to understand the origin of the outbreaks and whether anything has changed in the monkeypox virus.
Source: APE
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