The U.S. mpox emergency is over, but the disease is still simmering south of the border. Mexico and most Latin American governments have decided against the mpox vaccination campaign that’s helped drive down cases in the U.S. from more than 400 a day in August to nearly zero, Carmen reports. Public health officials fear the choice to forgo the vaccine is one example of how victories over mpox, the disease formerly known as monkeypox, can be ephemeral when countries go it alone. We could soon get a clearer picture of how big of a risk remains. Last year’s U.S. outbreak emerged during the worldwide LGBTQ pride festival season, and this year’s festivities are just around the corner. Why have Latin American countries rejected vaccination? Top Mexican health officials have claimed the shot hasn’t yet been proven safe and effective, even though the CDC has found that people who had a dose of the vaccine, Jynneos, from the Danish manufacturer Bavarian Nordic, were 14 times less likely to be infected than those unvaccinated. Jorge Alcocer Varela, Mexico’s health secretary, told the country’s Senate that the vaccine also didn’t prevent people from developing symptoms. He wasn’t encouraging its use, he said, because the number of people dying from the disease was low, according to Mexican media reports. And Mexico isn’t alone. Most Latin American countries have tried to stem the outbreak without vaccines, said Rubén Mayorga Sagastume, the mpox incident manager at the Pan American Health Organization. Only a dozen countries bought shots through a PAHO joint purchase mechanism: the Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago. Colombia made a deal with Japan in December to get 25,000 doses of a Japanese-made vaccine initially developed for smallpox to immunize people as part of a clinical trial. Several countries that didn’t get vaccines said they couldn’t agree to waive Bavarian Nordic’s liability for vaccine side effects, a practice that pharma companies typically demand during outbreaks, Mayorga Sagastume said. “Others, I imagine that was because of financial constraints, because vaccines were expensive,” he said. Where is the disease spreading now? Cases started to rise again at the end of last month, according to the World Health Organization. The number of cases reported globally was slightly more than 400 in the last week of January, with most new cases in the Americas and Africa. Of the 13 countries that saw an increase, Mexico reported the highest weekly hike, reaching 72 cases.
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