A handful of monkeypox cases have now been reported or suspected in the United Kingdom, Portugal and Spain.
Outbreaks are raising alarm as the disease occurs mostly in West and Central Africa, and only very sometimes spread elsewhere,
Here’s what scientists know so far.
‘highly unusual’
Monkeypox is a virus that causes a characteristic bumpy rash along with fever symptoms. It is usually mild, although there are two main strains: the Congo strain, which is more severe with a mortality rate of up to 10% and the West African strain, which has a mortality rate of over 1%. UK cases have been reported as a West African strain.
“Historically, very few cases have been exported. This has only happened eight times before this year,” said Jimmy Whitworth, professor of international public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who said that “extremely Extraordinary”.
Portugal has registered five confirmed cases, and Spain is testing 23 possible cases. No country has reported cases before.
transmission
The virus is spread through close contact, both in the spillover of animal hosts and, less commonly, between humans. It was first detected in monkeys in 1958, hence the name, although rodents are now seen as the main source of transmission.
This time the transmission is puzzling experts, as many of the cases in the United Kingdom – nine as of May 18 – have no known links to each other. Only the first case reported on May 6 had recently traveled to Nigeria.
As such, experts have warned of widespread transmission if cases go unreported.
The alert from the UK’s Health Protection Agency also highlighted that recent cases were mainly among men who identified themselves as gay, bisexual or men who had sex with men, and alerted those groups. advised to stay.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said this week that scientists will now sequence the viruses to see if they are linked.
Why now?
One possible scenario behind the increase in cases is an increase in travel as COVID restrictions are lifted.
“My working theory would be that there’s a lot of it in West and Central Africa, travel has resumed, and that’s why we’re seeing more cases,” Whitworth said.
Monkeypox puts virologists on alert because it is in the smallpox family, although it causes less serious illness.
Smallpox was eradicated by vaccination in 1980, and the shot has been phased out. But it also protects against monkeypox, and so the shutdown of vaccination campaigns has led to a boom in monkeypox cases, according to Anne Rimoin, an epidemiology professor at UCLA in California.
But experts have appealed to the people not to panic.
“It’s not going to cause a nationwide pandemic like COVID, but it’s a serious outbreak of a serious disease and we should take it seriously,” Whitworth said.
Read | What is monkeypox? Symptoms, incidence and is human-to-human transmission possible?