Turkey's General Directorate of Public Health announced Sunday that no monkeypox cases were reported in the country, putting an end to public concern in recent days as the virus makes waves around the world.
Monkeypox cases being reported in Europe had the country worried after social media is abuzz with comments that it may be the next “pandemic” for Turkey that just recently managed to bring down the number of coronavirus cases after two years of struggle.
The Directorate said in a written statement that human cases of monkeypox, a zoonotic disease stemming from primates and rodents, were most common in central and western Africa where it was endemic and noted that the disease was spreading through contact and inhaled droplets. “Monkeypox is a self-limited disease with the symptoms lasting usually 14 to 21 days,” the statement said. The Directorate said Turkish authorities were exchanging information with international authorities, including World Health Organization (WHO), European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) as well as several countries which reported cases and were “closely monitoring the developments.”
Professor İsmail Balık, an infectious diseases expert from Ankara University Faculty of Medicine, said monkeypox was rather “limited” in infections compared to COVID-19. “It does not require lockdowns as COVID-19 did,” he told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Sunday.
Turkey had lifted almost all travel restrictions as the pandemic eased, with the number of daily COVID-19 cases dropping to slightly above 1,000 while the mandatory mask rule is scrapped everywhere except mass transit and hospitals. Monkeypox, meanwhile, emerged in about a dozen countries in about two weeks, from the United States to Portugal, Germany to the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia and Spain among others. All have flights to and from Turkey, which connects Europe and Asia.
Balık said monkeypox was not spreading easily like COVID-19 and it required very close and intense contact for it to spread from one person to another. “If you heed the hygiene rules in your contact with others, the virus will not easily infect you,” he said. He also pointed out that monkeypox was from the “same family” of viruses as smallpox and people, who have been administered smallpox vaccines, had more than 80% protection against monkeypox.
“The world largely abandoned smallpox vaccination after the disease was eradicated in the 1980s. People at the age of 45 and above are largely vaccinated but monkeypox appears to be affecting younger people, as they are unvaccinated. Some countries are returning to production of a new generation of smallpox vaccines and others can follow their example too,” he underlined.
