The Ministry of Health announced this on Monday at the request of the APA. The Viennese virologist Monika Redlberger-Fritz from MedUni Vienna has meanwhile pointed out in the ORF-Ö1 “Morgenjournal” that monkeypox is relatively difficult to transmit from person to person.
Meanwhile, preparations for any further cases are in full swing. The “specialist documents for contact person management” should be made available to the responsible health authorities in the federal states by Tuesday morning at the latest. Then they should also be published on the homepage of the Ministry of Health. There was or is something similar for the corona pandemic. According to the Ministry of Health, the obligation to report monkeypox should also be implemented by Tuesday morning at the latest.
There is close coordination with the health authorities of the WHO and the ECDC, work is continuing on the most uniform possible specifications at European level. In coordination with the European authorities, it will also be checked whether and which vaccine might be suitable for use in Austria. Experts assume that the smallpox vaccine also protects against infection by 85 percent in monkeypox. However, according to the department, it is still being clarified whether this is actually the case. “In Austria, people are well prepared for the current circumstances surrounding monkeypox,” emphasized the ministry. There is still no reason for concern in Austria, Europe-wide “the confirmed cases are isolated cases”.
Redlberger-Fritz saw it similarly: “In view of the monkeypox, I really wouldn’t be too worried at the moment, because the monkeypox is not so easily transmitted from person to person and accordingly we will not see a pandemic or epidemic like we do know about other viral diseases,” she said in the “Morgenjournal”. She described the outbreak as “unusual” because monkeypox is a zoonosis and “usually is native and native to rodents or mice or small squirrel species” and then “is only transmitted to humans through close contact”. Human-to-human transmission “actually occurs very rarely and that’s an unusual frequency.”
According to the virologist, monkeypox is usually “a mild, self-limiting disease”. Rarely are there serious cases that can also lead to death. However, these were often reported in patients “who basically had a very poor immune system, i.e. were immunosuppressed per se”. Why monkeypox, which normally occurs mainly in West Africa, is now increasingly occurring in Europe is a question of contact tracing. The virologist also confirmed that people who had been vaccinated with smallpox – a mandatory vaccination until 1981 – also have very good protection against monkeypox.
According to Mario Dujakovic, spokesman for Vienna City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker (SPÖ), no other suspected cases have occurred in the environment of the monkeypox-infected patient. The – single-digit – number of close contacts are currently being contacted. According to the information, contact tracing is currently running on a recommendation basis: Those affected should pay attention to any symptoms they may have – especially the conspicuous skin pustules and contact the health hotline 1450 if necessary. Dujakovic pointed out that it is not – yet – a notifiable disease and also not a hospitalized disease from the outset. In any case, contact persons are currently not recommended to go into quarantine.
According to the health association, the monkeypox patient in Vienna is “doing well according to the circumstances”. He is currently receiving symptomatic therapy, “e.g. painkillers for the painfully swollen lymph nodes”. How long he will have to stay in the clinic is not yet foreseeable because isolation is “necessary until the skin lesions have crusted over.” This could take longer, up to three weeks.
The Viennese health authorities recommend a so-called shielding vaccination for people “who have had very close contact with people who have been proven to be infected”. In such cases, vaccination is carried out with the smallpox vaccine, since there is no vaccine against monkeypox.
The EU health authority ECDC announced on Monday that between May 15 and 23, 67 cases became known in nine EU member states. The case in Austria was already there. It was recommended that states should pay attention to the rapid identification of the virus, management, contact tracing and the registration of new cases. The contact tracing mechanisms should be updated, the diagnostic capacities for orthopoxviruses (mammal smallpox, NB) expanded and the availability of smallpox vaccine, medicines and protective equipment for health workers checked. “The possibility of further spread of the virus through close contact, such as sexual activity between people with multiple sex partners, is considered high,” warned ECDC Director Andrea Ammon.
According to reports by the news agencies dpa and Reuters, the World Health Organization (WHO) has no evidence that the monkeypox pathogen has mutated. The head of the UN agency’s smallpox secretariat, Rosamund Lewis, said Monday the virus was less likely to mutate. Her colleague Maria van Kerkhove explained that the known cases in Europe and North America were not severe. “It’s a manageable situation.” However, the WHO experts still saw unanswered questions about the spread of the virus. At the same time, the WHO opposed the stigmatization of certain population groups. “This is not a gay disease,” said WHO expert Andy Seale. Sexual contact is one possibility of transmission, but skin contact is also sufficient.
The WHO currently sees no need for mass vaccination against monkeypox. Measures such as hygiene and preventive sexual behavior would help contain the spread of the virus, Richard Pebody, head of the pathogen team at WHO Europe, told Reuters on Monday. The most important measures to combat the outbreak are tracing contacts and isolating those who are infected. Vaccine stocks are relatively limited.
The British health authority UKHSA meanwhile recommended a three-week quarantine for close contacts of people infected with monkeypox, according to dpa. It is highly likely to be infected if you either live in the same household with a sick person, have had sexual intercourse with such a person or have changed their bed linen without protective clothing, according to a statement on Monday. This group should therefore receive a protective smallpox vaccination in addition to the recommendation for quarantine. In particular, contact with pregnant women, children under the age of twelve and people with suppressed immune systems should be avoided, it said.
Meanwhile, according to the dpa, containment measures are being prepared after the first cases of monkeypox have appeared in Germany, according to Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD). Recommendations on isolation and quarantine are currently being developed for Germany, the minister said on Monday on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly in Geneva. He assumes that they could already be presented this Tuesday. Vaccination recommendations for people who are particularly at risk are also being considered.
Source: Nachrichten
