Sounds fairly unhealthy, proper?
It seems the truth is a tad extra sophisticated. On the WHO web site, the latest mpox knowledge listed beneath China is the sum of circumstances reported in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
The shortage of knowledge separation is critical right here for a couple of causes. First, whereas case counts have certainly risen in China, we don’t know by how a lot and over what timeframe. China reported 106 circumstances in June alone, and it’s secure to imagine there have been extra circumstances in Might and July. However there’s no data there to assist us perceive the precise urgency and severity of the outbreak, which may result in panic and uninformed interventions. What’s extra, as its dealing with of covid reveals, the Chinese language authorities could also be holding onto knowledge to serve its personal pursuits.
Past that, this mixed knowledge reporting obscures the truth that Taiwan and China, with their completely different governing our bodies, have responded to public well being emergencies in very other ways.
Whereas China has not signaled any curiosity in utilizing mpox vaccines, Taiwan, which has its personal CDC, has already administered over 72,000 photographs thus far. Whereas China has solely issued a one-month report of case counts, Taiwan has a public database exhibiting what number of new circumstances are reported every week, making it straightforward to see that the outbreak is on the decline there, six months after native transmission began.
So aggregating very completely different sources of knowledge creates a complicated panorama and makes it laborious to comply with the impression of public well being measures.
Which means that when the WHO knowledge reveals a 550% enhance in weekly new circumstances in China between July 10 and July 17, the bounce means little. It doesn’t reveal the route of the mpox outbreak; it solely emphasizes the damaged, irregular sample of case reporting from China.
This isn’t to say the outbreak in China is insignificant, however that the info on the WHO web site can simply mislead observers.
