Monkeypox cases have been reported in at least a dozen nations, making this the greatest epidemic of the virus outside of Sub-Saharan Africa since the first human infection was recorded more than 50 years ago.
According to the World Health Organization, there were approximately 100 confirmed cases worldwide as of May 21. The UK Health Security Agency announced on Monday that it had discovered 36 more cases of monkeypox, raising the total number of cases verified in England since May 7 to 56, the highest number ever.
Infected people and their close connections have been instructed to quarantine for three weeks by some public health organisations, including those in the United Kingdom and Belgium. As part of measures to inoculate close contacts, governments are storing up on smallpox vaccine doses, which also protect against monkeypox. Monkeypox is a virus that, like chickenpox, causes fever and characteristic skin lesions. The majority of instances are minor, and the disease normally goes away on its own in two to four weeks.
Skin-to-skin contact with an infected person or body fluid exchange are the most typical ways of transmission. Respiratory droplets might potentially spread the infection. In the most recent outbreak, gay and bisexual men accounted for the majority of cases.
“It primarily emerges on the skin’s surface,” said David Heymann, an infectious disease epidemiology professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He described the virus that causes Covid-19 as “not at all like Sars-Cov-2.” “It rarely spreads through the respiratory system.”
The virus, which was first discovered in laboratory monkeys in 1958 and then in a human 12 years later, is spread via close contact with animals in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly rodents.
While some of the first cases in the current outbreak were connected to travel to west Africa, health officials in western countries have stated that the virus is already spreading in their communities.
