Monkeypox

We'll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Disease control and prevention news every morning. Health officials in the US have detected the ...

It's a virus that is mainly spread by wild animals in parts of west and central Africa, according to the WHO — but human-to-human transmission can also occur, ...

Preston added: “Monkeypox is not recognized as a sexually transmitted disease — that is, something that’s hugely dependent on being spread through sexual contact. “That’s the worrying thing — the epidemiology would suggest there are other unrecognized cases at the moment. “As a whole, we shouldn’t be panicking — this is not a disease that spreads like COVID-19 within the general population,” Mabbott told Fortune. “Monkeypox isn’t very transmissible in humans. “That would suggest there are other contacts forming the connections between those cases,” he explained. “It’s still somewhat of a mystery as to how this is spreading. The West African variety – the strain currently circulating in Europe and the U.S. – has a recorded fatality rate of around 1%, while the Central African strain’s recorded fatality rate is around 10%. He added that it was concerning to see that some of the cases identified in the U.K. had no links to one another. The cases identified in the U.K. have all been the West African strain of the virus, which is thought to be milder than the Central African strain. Two cases of the virus were identified in London a week after the first case was reported — but authorities said the individuals had no connection to the previously confirmed case, and “where and how they acquired their infection remains under investigation.” It’s a virus that is mainly spread by wild animals in parts of west and central Africa, according to the WHO — but human-to-human transmission can also occur, and it is occasionally exported to other parts of the world when an infected person travels. Canada is investigating 13 suspected cases of the disease, with the U.S. patient reported to have recently traveled to the country. The first case associated with the current outbreak was reported in the U.K. on May 7 in a person who had recently traveled to Nigeria, where they are believed to have contracted the disease.

The Italian patient tested positive at a hospital in Rome after returning from the Canary Islands and the Swede was diagnosed in Stockholm.

MAY 16, 2022: Four more cases were announced, bringing the UK total to seven. MAY 19, 2022: Two more cases were revealed, with no travel links or connections to other cases. The individual worked at Blackpool Victoria Hospital and treated the second Monkeypox case. Monkeypox is a rare viral infection which kills up to one in ten of those infected but does not spread easily between people. All the human infections followed contact with an infected pet and all patients recovered. They were treated at the Royal Free Hospital in London. They received treatment at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. Patients with confirmed monkeypox have been recorded in the UK, US, Spain, Sweden, Italy and Portugal, while Canada is probing potential cases Positive cases and their contacts are being made to isolate for 21 days. At least three patients are receiving care at specialist NHS units in London and Newcastle 'We still don't know where the person was infected. Portugal said nine cases have been confirmed.

Nine cases of Monkeypox have been detected in the UK already this month, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). The first UK case, ...

The NHS reports that Monkeypox can also be caught from infected wild animals in parts of west and central Africa. Monkeypox has not previously been described as a sexually transmitted infection, though it can be passed on by direct contact during sex. Elsewhere in Europe, Portugal and Spain have reported a number of suspected infections, which can causes a rash accompanied by blisters among other symptoms.

STAT had many questions about monkeypox. Fortunately, Andrea McCollum, an expert at the CDC, had many answers.

It depends on the person and it depends on the extent of the rash. If a patient’s been in bed, then the lesions have exudate and pus and that gets on the bed linens and the virus is in that material. A number of the cases are in men who have sex with men, which raises the question of sexual transmission. But at this point, everything we’re hearing and seeing is consistent with what we know about monkeypox, which is that it requires close contact. We do know that lesions themselves, including the ones that present on the surface of the skin, they’re loaded with virus. It’s only during that healing phase [with monkeypox] when there’s crusting and the skin is regenerating a bit, patients mention itching. But I will remind you that you can have an R-naught of less than one and the agent can still be transmitted person to person. I don’t think we have a really good handle on whether most of it is respiratory or skin-to-skin. We don’t have really good contemporary estimates of R-naught. [R-naught is the figure that estimates how many people an infected person, on average, will infect.] We don’t really have any estimates of R-naught for the West African clade. So far it seems that the cases are being caused by viruses from the West African clade, which triggers milder disease than the other family of viruses, called the Congo Basin clade. Monkeypox causes a flu-like array of symptoms, but also comes with a distinctive rash; one telltale sign is the fact that lesions often appear on the palms of hands. At this point, the cases are mainly being detected by clinics that treat sexually transmitted diseases and are being seen in men who have sex with men.

So far, nine people have been infected with the virus in the UK, all but two in London. The disease is normally sporadic and linked to travel to parts of ...

This isn't another COVID. But the outbreak of monkeypox is unusual. It's not known whether they are linked to what is going on in the UK or whether there have been multiple introductions of the virus from West Africa. It's more likely that prolonged and intimate skin to skin contact is spreading the virus. But it's now clear that the virus is spreading within the UK, and many cases are likely to be going undetected. So far, nine people have been infected with the virus in the UK, all but two in London. The disease is normally sporadic and linked to travel to parts of Africa where it is endemic. Normally the disease is sporadic and linked to travel to parts of Africa where it is endemic.

The UK Health Security Agency has now detected two additional cases bringing the total number to nine. An image created during an investigation into an ...

Severe cases occur more commonly among children and are related to the extent of virus exposure, patient health status and nature of complications. There are two clades of monkeypox virus: the west African clade and Congo Basin (central African) clade. Residents and travellers to endemic countries should avoid contact with sick animals (rodents and primates, dead or alive) that could harbour the monkeypox virus and should refrain from eating or handling wild game. It is wrong to think that we are on the brink of a nationwide outbreak.” The six most recent cases – four in London, one in north-east England and one in south east England – do not have any known links with each other, or any history of travel. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says the virus does not usually spread easily and the risk to people is low.

“We are particularly urging men who are gay and bisexual to be aware of any unusual rashes or lesions and to contact a sexual health service without delay if ...

The disease can also be transmitted by touching monkeypox skin blisters or scabs, or getting too close to coughs and sneezes from an infected person. Patients will usually need to stay in a specialist hospital so infection doesn’t spread and general symptoms can be treated. The rash is sometimes confused with chickenpox, because it starts as raised spots which turn into small scabs filled with fluid. But it is possible to spread the disease through touching clothing, bedding, or towels used by someone with the rash. It’s thought to be spread by rodents, such as rats, mice, and squirrels. Monkeypox can be caught from a bite by an infected animal, or by touching its blood, body fluids or fur.

It was first identified in animals in 1958 in crab-eating macaque monkeys being used as laboratory animals. Twelve years later, the first human was diagnosed in ...

Cases of monkeypox, a virus typically confined to West and Central Africa, have recently turned up in several countries, including the U.K., Spain, ...

While acknowledging that the outbreak is unusual, experts stressed that any risk to the public is low, given monkeypox’s relatively low rate of contagiousness. Since then, eight more cases have been confirmed in the U.K., all of them among people who had no obvious connection to the first one. In the U.K., the first case was confirmed on May 7 in a man who had been in Nigeria and had developed a rash before returning. One strain of monkeypox is highly deadly, with a fatality rate of about 10 percent; another strain, which is the one detected in the U.K., causes death in less than 1 percent of cases. Health authorities said he was in “good condition” and “poses no risk to the public.” In 2003, a Midwest outbreak tied to travel in Ghana affected more than 70 people, though only two fell seriously ill and no one died.

The virus behind monkeypox is a close relative of the one that caused smallpox but is less deadly and less transmissible, causing symptoms that include fever ...

The oft-cited fatality rate of about 10 percent applies to a strain that infected people in the Congo Basin. The West African strain, which several of the current cases have been linked to, has a fatality rate closer to 1 percent—and that’s in poor, rural populations. And as another bioterrorism precaution, stockpiles of three smallpox vaccines are large enough “to vaccinate basically everyone in the U.S.” Inglesby said. It’s urgent to identify people early, get them treatment, and identify contacts.” It helps that one common symptom is an obvious rash, which looks like an extreme version of chickenpox. As for the U.S., “there are currently no additional suspected cases” beyond the individual in Massachusetts, McCollum told me. Are they the work of a new and more transmissible strain of monkeypox? A 2012 study suggested that the virus can persist in aerosols for several days—but that was under artificial laboratory conditions, and persistence is just one small part of the infection process. For decades, a few scientists have voiced concerns that the monkeypox virus could have become better at infecting people—ironically because we eradicated its relative, smallpox, in the late 1970s. “I’ve seen a lot of people writing as if everything we know about monkeypox is definitive and finalized, but the reality is that it is still a rare zoonotic infection,” she said. “I don’t think people should be freaking out at this stage,” Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington told me, “but I don’t trust my own gut feelings anymore, because I’m so sick of all this shit that I tend to be optimistic.” Then again, Marr is less certain about monkeypox than she was about COVID. And Titanji notes that our knowledge of monkeypox is based on just 1,500 or so recorded cases, as of 2018. Rarely, monkeypox makes it to other continents, and when it does, outbreaks “are so small, they’re measured in single digits,” Thomas Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me. This suggests that the monkeypox virus may be surreptitiously spreading from person to person, with some number of undetected cases.

What is Monkeypox? Two more people in England have been diagnosed with the rare viral infection monkeypox, making nine in total so far this month. The ...

There was a second outbreak in 2021, in which three family members were diagnosed with the virus after travel to Nigeria. it is a sensible precaution that those people who may have come into contact with these recent cases are being traced and followed up”. Seventy-five per cent of sufferers were male and aged between 21 and 40 years old. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. The first recorded case of monkeypox was identified in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1970. The World Health Organisation (WHO) traced the sickness to the tropical rainforests of Central and West Africa and defines it as a viral zoonotic (meaning it can be transmitted from animals to humans) disease akin to smallpox, itself eradicated in 1980.

A total of nine people in the UK have tested positive for Monkeypox as the virus outbreak continues.

- the coughs or sneezes of a person with the monkeypox rash - Chills May 18, 2022

What is monkeypox? Monkeypox is a disease caused by a virus that, as the name suggests, usually spreads among monkeys in Central and West Africa, but ...

In Africa monkeypox can be deadly in as many as 1 in 10 people who contract the disease, according to the CDC. However, there are two main types of monkeypox: the Congo strain and the West African strain. The expectation is this outbreak can be contained by contact tracing, like all previous monkeypox outbreaks. What’s more, the WHO says these figures refer to the proportion of deaths in those confirmed to be infected, called the case fatality ratio. There have been several monkeypox outbreaks outside Africa, but usually involving only a handful of cases with very limited local spread. Some researchers have previously warned that monkeypox is a growing threat. The first person confirmed to be infected in the UK had travelled to Nigeria. They developed a rash on 5 May and were hospitalised on 6 May, but have fully recovered. In animal studies, tecovirimat significantly increased the survival rate of animals given very high doses of monkeypox. In addition, those who are old enough to have been vaccinated against smallpox as babies should have some protection. The first human case was identified in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970. Monkeypox may also be transmitted by eating the undercooked meat of an infected animal. “These latest cases, together with reports of cases in countries across Europe, confirm our initial concerns that there could be spread of monkeypox within our communities,” she said. The US and Sweden each have one confirmed case, Italy has one confirmed and two suspected cases, and Canada has 17 suspected cases.

The symptoms and causes of monkeypox infections, which CDC calls an 'emerging issue'. A string of new cases in Europe and the U.S. is "the most important ...

The CDC website states that "in the event of another outbreak of monkeypox in the U.S., CDC will establish guidelines explaining who should be vaccinated." There’s really quite a lot of work that would need to be done before we would say that it can be transmitted sexually," she said. The West African clade of monkeypox is much more benign than the Congo Basin clade," Rao said. Rimoin said supportive care is pretty effective for the West African clade. Monkeypox belongs to the family of poxviruses, which includes smallpox. As an emerging issue, we’re asking people to keep it top of mind at the moment." Beyond that, she said, there are some experimental drugs that have not been widely tested in people. Person-to-person transmission can occur through the exchange of large respiratory droplets during prolonged face-to-face contact. So what we’re seeing right now is unusual," said Dr. Agam Rao, a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology. "We are telling people this is an emerging issue," she said. The U.S. reported its first monkeypox case of the year on Wednesday: a man in Massachusetts. New York City's health department said on Thursday that it is investigating a possible case as well. France reported a suspected case on Thursday too.

This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and ...

"The pets were infected after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana," the CDC said. Since then, there have been more than 450 reported cases in Nigeria and at least eight known exported cases internationally, the agency said. "Monkeypox can be a serious infection, with mortality rates from this type of monkeypox virus having been around 1% in other outbreaks. Those cases are typically linked to international travel or imported animals infected with the pox, the CDC said. "At this time, we don't want people to worry," Murthy said. The painful, raised poxes are pearly and fluid-filled, often surrounded by red circles.

In a world still on edge from the Covid-19 pandemic, the emergence this week of a scattering of cases of a different disease jumping from animals to humans has ...

Widespread use of the vaccine has been wound down, however, since smallpox was stamped out more than four decades ago – and this may be a factor in the current spread of monkeypox. Public-health experts are now scrambling to trace cases and trying to ensure that doctors and nurses are aware of the disease and can report infections if necessary. That has led to speculation that the disease may now be sexually transmitted, but experts have said it is probably just spreading through close contact. The disease spreads from animals to humans by bites, or by touching an infected animal’s blood, body fluids or fur, or eating its partially cooked meat. The UK cases have all been the West African strain. Monkeypox is typically caught from infected wild animals in parts of Africa. Symptoms usually start after five to 21 days and include a fever, a headache, muscle aches, backache, swollen glands, shivering and exhaustion. He went on: “Now on the bright side this implies that the severity of the infections are not extremely high or we would have noticed sooner. Bill Hanage, an epidemiology professor at Harvard, said: “These are the largest, most disseminated outbreaks of their kind we have seen. Until now, monkeypox has been known to be mainly concentrated in a handful of African countries, including Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with cases only rarely exported elsewhere. Matthew Ferrari, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State University, added: “What we’re seeing may not manifest as a large-scale catastrophe. Two of the cases live together, but there’s no direct contact between the rest. Victims are being struck with fevers, aches and pains and then a rash of ugly fluid-filled bumps and lesions that spread across the skin.

This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and ...

"The pets were infected after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana," the CDC said. Since then, there have been more than 450 reported cases in Nigeria and at least eight known exported cases internationally, the agency said. "Monkeypox can be a serious infection, with mortality rates from this type of monkeypox virus having been around 1% in other outbreaks. Those cases are typically linked to international travel or imported animals infected with the pox, the CDC said. "At this time, we don't want people to worry," Murthy said. The painful, raised poxes are pearly and fluid-filled, often surrounded by red circles.

Officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are closely tracking recent clusters of monkeypox infections around the world -- and possible ...

The reservoir for this virus, the natural reservoir in nature is probably certain types of rodents." At this point, again, these numbers are still small -- we want them to be aware of these symptoms and if they have any concerns to reach out to their doctor." "And if you haven't had contact in Massachusetts and you're not related to the person who had disease or in that link at all -- until we have any other reason to expect or to understand how this disease got into the United States -- your risk of getting monkeypox is really low." "I think to the public overall, there really is no clear risk at this point," Shenoy said. , belonging to the scientific family of "pox" viruses. Those pets were housed at an animal vendor's facilities in Illinois where they may have been infected with the virus. "As we work to complete our investigations and get our arms around it then hopefully we'll have much stronger recommendations for folks." "It's definitely something that we're discussing and evaluating, whether offering smallpox vaccine makes sense in the current setting," she said. . But cases have been identified that were associated with international travel or importing animals from areas where the disease is more common. The facilities housed other small mammals imported from Ghana that tested positive for monkeypox virus: two African giant pouched rats, nine dormice and three rope squirrels. "We're working through the investigations." "We have a level of scientific concern about what we're seeing because this is a very unusual situation.

Health authorities say a man in his 40s, who recently returned from Europe, is isolating at home.

We’ve got the best health authorities in the world.” “The infection is usually a mild illness and most people recover within a few weeks,” she said. “Testing has confirmed that he has the virus and he remains in isolation at the Alfred with mild symptoms,” the Victoria health department said on Friday.

Monkeypox cases are popping up in several countries. Health experts are cautiously concerned, but this isn't like Covid-19.

Currently, the general public doesn’t need to be particularly worried about the risk monkeypox viruses pose to themselves and their loved ones. And in addition to treatments, we already have excellent vaccines to protect those at highest risk from infection — public health authorities in the UK are currently vaccinating close contacts of cases to prevent further spread of infection. This doesn’t mean monkeypox is only circulating among men who have sex with men, and some infections have been diagnosed in people who are not gay or bisexual men. Of the two, the Congo Basin version has historically spread more easily from person-to-person and caused more deaths. That’s partly because monkeypox is related to the smallpox virus, and immunity to smallpox is protective against monkeypox. But as of 1980, smallpox has been eradicated in humans, and vaccinations against smallpox have grown rare — and human cases of monkeypox have been on the rise. Infection with the monkeypox virus usually causes a flu-like illness with fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, and a rash. We have more tools to prevent and treat it — far more than we did for Covid-19 at the outset of the pandemic — and both public health and the general public have had a lot of practice taking measures to prevent infections from spreading. Monkeypox viruses generally circulate among wild animals in Central and West Africa, and usually spread to people when they eat or have other close contact with infected animals. But with monkeypox, the world faces a very different situation than in the early days of Covid-19. Monkeypox, unlike SARS-CoV-2, is a known quantity. (The numbers are changing rapidly; a University of Oxford epidemiologist tweeted a link to a makeshift tracker where you can see the latest figures.) Occasionally, public health authorities identify single cases in people recently returned from West or Central Africa, where the disease is more common.

Cases of the rare disease are now confirmed in four European countries, health authorities say.

According to health officials, the man has been hospitalised, is in "good condition" and "poses no risk to the public". It follows the confirmation of cases in the US, Spain and Portugal on Wednesday, as well as the investigation of 13 suspected cases in Canada. Cases of Monkeypox are being investigated in European countries as well as the US, Canada and Australia, according to health authorities and local media reports.

Human to human transmission is also uncommon – occasionally, cases in the western world are identified in travellers returning from Africa but to have inter- ...

Safe and effective vaccines are already licensed, and due to the slow evolution of this virus, it is unlikely to evolve to evade the protection offered by vaccines – indeed, smallpox never achieved this. This means that the chances of a new, more highly transmissible monkeypox strain emerging to cause an epidemic or pandemic is low. Monkeypox is cousin to probably the most devastating virus humans have ever encountered – smallpox. Occasionally, these mistakes create a new, better virus that can transmit more easily, which is is how new variants have arisen over the course of the pandemic. The good news is that monkeypox evolves far less rapidly, and so has a bigger hill to climb to achieve the same status. However, that doesn’t mean we are on the verge of another pandemic.

Cases of a rare virus related to smallpox have been reported in the US, UK, Canada and Spain. Here's what we know.