Vaccination rates for the vulnerable are soaring in Africa, the W.H.O. says.

Most coun­tries in Africa have made sig­nif­i­cant gains in vac­ci­nat­ing two vul­ner­a­ble groups against Covid-19, but new infec­tions are creep­ing upward as sum­mer trav­el begins and some coun­tries ease pub­lic health mea­sures, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion said on Thursday.

About half of pub­lic health work­ers and peo­ple over 60 have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed in 31 coun­tries in the agency’s Africa region, Dr. Mat­shidiso Moeti, the W.H.O.’s region­al direc­tor, said at a news con­fer­ence. Dr. Moeti described that as an “impres­sive turn­around” since the end of 2021, when just one-third of health work­ers and 10 per­cent of old­er peo­ple had been ful­ly inoculated.

The W.H.O. has pre­dict­ed a sharp reduc­tion in the num­ber of Covid-19 deaths this year in its 48-nation Africa region, which cov­ers most of the continent. 

The “mar­gin­al increase” in new infec­tions last week end­ed a peri­od of sus­tained decline, Dr. Moeti said.

But vac­ci­na­tion rates remain below 10 per­cent in 14 African coun­tries, she warned, adding: “If these coun­tries are at risk, we are all at risk.”

The encour­ag­ing news about Covid-19 was tem­pered, how­ev­er, by warn­ings about the spread of mon­key­pox, a viral dis­ease that pre­vi­ous­ly was rarely seen out­side a few coun­tries in cen­tral and west­ern Africa. The 1,900 con­firmed cas­es in the cur­rent out­break are spread across 39 coun­tries, eight of them in Africa, Dr. Moeti said.

Nige­ria has report­ed 36 con­firmed cas­es, with small­er num­bers in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go, the Repub­lic of Con­go, Cen­tral African Repub­lic, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin and Moroc­co. There are sus­pect­ed cas­es in some others.

Far more cas­es have been found in Europe, the epi­cen­ter of the cur­rent out­break, where more than 1,500 cas­es have been con­firmed in 25 Euro­pean coun­tries. Cas­es have also been con­firmed in the Unit­ed States.

Dr. Moeti not­ed that two of the African coun­tries with con­firmed recent cas­es — Ghana and Moroc­co — had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed mon­key­pox. “This is clear­ly an unusu­al sit­u­a­tion that is affect­ing more and more coun­tries,” she said.

Unlike the coro­n­avirus, the mon­key­pox virus is not known to linger in the air; it spreads main­ly through direct con­tact with bod­i­ly flu­ids or sores of an infect­ed per­son or animal.

The W.H.O. emer­gency com­mit­tee is expect­ed to meet next week to decide whether the mon­key­pox out­break con­sti­tutes a pub­lic health emer­gency of inter­na­tion­al con­cern, a for­mal dec­la­ra­tion that could trig­ger a coor­di­nat­ed response between countries.

In Africa, its offi­cials say they are procur­ing tests and urg­ing gov­ern­ments to step up test­ing for the disease.

“So soon after the inequities Africa expe­ri­enced in respect of the Covid-19 response, we rec­og­nize we can’t afford any poten­tial repeat,” Dr. Moeti said. “We need to be ade­quate­ly prepared.”