Monkeypox: what to know about the virus detected in US

A DAY after Massachusetts, US, health authorities confirmed a case of a rare and sometimes serious viral illness called monkeypox, officials in New

York City said they were investigating a possible case on Thursday amid a rash of cases outside the disease’s typical territory.

Monkeypox, which can be passed to animals and humans, is usually found in Central and West Africa. But health authorities in Europe have confirmed more than a dozen cases this month and are investigating dozens more.

Some infections confirmed in the UK “have no travel links” to a place where monkeypox is regularly found, officials said, suggesting the virus might be spreading through the community. The case in Massachusetts is the first infection identified in the US this year.

Monkeypox is not known to spread easily between humans. The fact that cases are emerging in several countries at once – with signs of sustained transmission in people – was striking, said Aris Katzourakis, a professor of evolution and genomics at the University of Oxford.

“It’s either a lot of bad luck or something quite unusual happening here,” Katzourakis said.

WHAT IS MONKEYPOX?

Monkeypox is named for the animals in which it was discovered. The disease cropped up in 1958 among monkeys kept for research, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – more than a decade before a human case was identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mass vaccination against smallpox “presumably” curbed monkeypox infections for a time, researchers wrote in a 2005 article. But cases resurged, thanks in part to a lack of immunity in later generations, they say. More than 450 cases have been reported in Nigeria since 2017, according to the CDC.

Monkeypox infections typically last two to four weeks and begin with flu-like symptoms and swelling of the lymph nodes. Eventually fluid-filled bumps – or “pox” – spread across the skin.

The disease can spread through contact with animals, infected people and materials used by infected people, health authorities say. Examples listed by the CDC include contact with bodily fluids, contact with monkeypox sores and infection through respiratory droplets in a “close setting” such as a shared household.

Monkeypox can be deadly, but two major strains of the virus pose different risks. About one in 10 people infected with a Congo Basin strain have been found to die, according to the World Health Organization, while a West

African strain appeared to be fatal for about one in 100 people infected.

The milder strain was the one infecting people who were hospitalised in the UK. It is not clear what strain the Massachusetts patient contracted.

HOW WORRIED SHOULD WE

BE? HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO COVID-19?

Experts says monkeypox is different from the coronavirus that upended the world. Monkeypox is highly visible, making contact-tracing and isolation easier. An existing smallpox vaccine could help protect the public if needed, Katzourakis said. And “we don’t have the potential for something spreading through the globe at anything like the kind of rate that we saw with Covid”, he said, because monkeypox transmits less easily between humans.

The latest spate of cases stands out, Katzourakis said. The longer it continues, the more chance the virus has to mutate and improve its transmissibility, just as the coronavirus has.

Health officials had noted recent cases among men who had sex with other men – a pattern that was crucial to understand, Inglesby said, as officials had not considered sexual orientation to be a risk factor for monkeypox.

WHERE ELSE HAS MONKEYPOX BEEN IDENTIFIED THIS MONTH?

The UK and Portugal have announced confirmed cases, while Spanish authorities said on Wednesday that they were investigating more than 20 suspected cases. The first known patient in the UK had travelled to

Nigeria recently, officials said. | THE WASHINGTON POST