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In Brief | Infectious Disease Update; Weekending 26 June 22
Type of article: In Brief
MedED Catalogue Reference: MPIB005
CategoryTags: Infectious Diseases |TB | Radiology
Sources: NCID,WHO, UKGov
Published on MedED: 26 June 2022
This week South Africa recorded its first case of Monkeypox. According to the NCID, the case was detected in a 30-year-old man from Gauteng. They report that the man had no travel history.
In a follow-up story to our report last week, the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the WHO, which met on the 23rd of June, did not declare Monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern. They recommended increasing vigilance concerning contact tracing of confirmed cases and monitoring all laboratory-confirmed cases. We do not have an update on the renaming of the virus we reported last week, but we are keeping an eye on that story for you.
You can access the WHO's ongoing multi-country update below.
In other stories of interest, the UK Health Security Agency posted an alert on the 22nd of June stating it had found "…poliovirus in sewage samples collected from the London Beckton Sewage Treatment Works."
According to the alert, it is customary to find up to 3 polioviruses each year in the ordinary course of surveillance of sewer systems. Those viruses are derived from travellers to the UK from overseas countries, who had received the live oral polio vaccine, and were not detected on an ongoing basis.
The current samples revealed several closely-related viruses in samples taken between February and May. Concerningly, the alert notes that "…the virus has continued to evolve and is now classified as a 'vaccine-derived' poliovirus type 2 (VDPV2), which on rare occasions can cause serious illness, such as paralysis, in people who are not fully vaccinated."5
You will remember the last few months have seen cases of the wild poliovirus in Africa, thought to be the Pakistan variant. The previous case of wild polio in the UK was detected in 1984
This is thought to be yet another impact of declining childhood vaccination rates. The UK Health and Safety Agency urges parents to ensure their children's vaccinations are up to date.
2. Monkeypox case identified in South Africa (NCID)
3. Meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee regarding the multi-country monkeypox outbreak (WHO)
4. Multi-country monkeypox outbreak: situation update (WHO)
5. Poliovirus detected in sewage from North and East London
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