Monkeypox outbreak problem intensifies as cases surge

Monkeypox, a much milder cousin of smallpox that has occasionally caused small outbreaks in Africa, is thought to spread slowly and is unlikely to become a pandem.

Over 100 suspected cases have been reported in Spain, Portugal, the US, Canada, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Israel in the past 3 da.

"It's not typical at all," said epidemiologist Rosamund Lewis, a spearhead of poxvirus disea.

The virus was discovered in a group studying monkeys in 1958, but its natural hosts are likely rodents and other small mamma.

The Congo Basin strain kills up to 10% of those infected, but recent outbreaks appear to involve only West African strains, which have had a mortality rate of about 1% in past outbrea.

However, the outbreak "occurs in such a wide geographic area, and overall, the number of suspected cases appears to be alarmingly hi.

"It's just a fraction of the population and we don't think it's going to take off like COVID-19," Raosa.

The first case reported in this outbreak was a traveller who returned to the UK on 4 May from monkeypox hotspot Niger.

Clinicians confirmed that the patient developed monkeypox three days lat.

Published the first complete genomeThe virus is most similar to the 2018 and 2019 exports of tourists from Nigeria to Singapore, Israel and the United Stat.

Its lesions are similar to those of other diseases like chickenpox and syphilis, and most doctors won't consider testing .

2017 reportIt was suspected that several patients had genital ulce.

There is no evidence that semen can transmit the vir.

Two of them were infected with HIV and were well controlled by medicati.

He speculates that virus transmission may have been at very low levels during the COVID-19 lockdown, "and then all of a sudden, things open up and people start living their lives aga.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a massive global movement brought the spread to a halt;Today, the virus is the only human pathogen to have been eradicated, although there are still samples in Russian and American la.

With the sharp decline in cases in the early 1970s, countries began to stop using the smallpox vaccine because its risks outweighed the potential benefi.

The vaccine contains a labmade virus called vaccinia that replicates in subjects, sometimes causing severe side effects, killing one in every 1 million vaccinat.

WHO's vaccination campaign ended last yearSmallp.

Both smallpox infection and the smallpox vaccine protect against monkeypox, so over the past 50 years, more and more people have become susceptible to monkeyp.

Some researchers worry that monkeypox may have evolved to fill the "niche" left by smallp.

In fact, reported casesSteady growthIn Africa for many years, the new outbreak is the first to occur simultaneously on several continen.

There are two vaccines against smallpox and monkeypox in Europe and North Ameri.

a, the manufactureremergency biological solutions, similar to the vaccines used in eradication campaigns, can still cause serious illness and even death in people with compromised immune syste.

another, fromBavaria Nordic, uses a non-replicating form of vaccinia specifically designed to reduce side effec.

It is the only vaccine expressly approved for monkeyp.

Insufficient supply of vaccines

Earlier this month, the UK began offering vaccines to health-care workers who have been exposed to monkeypox patien.

Spain has not done so, Simeone said, noting that the country's infectious disease clinicians have personal protective equipment and experience to protect themselv.

The Massachusetts General Hospital, which is dealing with the only confirmed case in the.


, also did not provide staff with the vacci.

They also took appropriate precautions, said Paul Bidinger, director of the hospital's Center for Disaster Medici.

But even if the.


has approved a vaccine, clinicians cannot prescribe it: They exist only in national stockpiles controlled by the Centers for Disease Contr.

Currently, it considers health care workers in hospitals to be at "moderate" risk and do not need to be vaccinat.

Vaccines that prevent disease even when used

up to 4 daysIt can also be used to protect suspected or confirmed cases of monkeypox in contacts after human exposure to the vir.

So far, no state has announced plans to do .

Both vaccines are in short supply and are usually only available through national stockpil.

In a curious coincidence, the Bavarian Nordics held a meeting this week with Heyman and nine other public health leaders from around the world, planned six months ago, to discuss the need for a rise in monkeypox cases over the past few yea.

More national stockpiles of vaccin.

"We really thought at the time that experts and authorities in the field needed to start rethinking this, " said Bernard Hoet, the company's vice president of healthcare strate.

"Companies like ours can't always stockpile medicines for all countri.

Today we have some doses that we're going to distribute, but how do you want us to decide if they're here or there?"

Drugs to treat severe monkeypox also exi.

One, Tekovirimat,2018Be the first drug approved by the.


Food and Drug Administration (FDA)treatment of smallpoxIt has been shown to be safe in human trials, and a closely related virus has been used in anima.

Based on similar data, the FDA approved a second drug to treat smallpox,Brincidofovir, last ye.

While drugs and vaccines offer hope for limiting the severity and scope of the outbreak,

WHO statement"These measures are not yet widespread," the warning, issued on May 18, sa.

If cases continue to rise and the virus emerges in more countries, the alarm bells are likely to grow loud.