Experts say while the current monkeypox outbreaks should be taken seriously, there is no need for the public to panic.
Infectious disease specialist and professor at the University of California San Francisco, Dr Peter Chin Hong said he does not expect monkeypox to be a serious threat to public health because it is not very transmissible and people are now on alert for it.
“The reason why people are hearing about it now is that there is, for the first time in the history of monkeypox, simultaneous outbreaks in multiple countries where you would not usually see monkeypox as it is usually seen in West and Central Africa.”
The first monkeypox outbreak outside of Africa consisted of 70 cases in the US in 2003 when pet prairie dogs were infected after being housed with Gambian pouched rats and dormice that had been imported from Ghana. The humans who bought the animals got infected.
Recently, the first case was reported on May 7. Up to Thursday, there were 200 confirmed cases and more than 100 suspected cases of monkeypox in more than 20 countries including Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the US and Canada.
He said one school of thought is that the recent spread was related to two large raves (parties) held in Belgium and Spain.
“A lot of people attended and went back home. And because monkeypox has a long incubation period, around 12 days to three weeks, you are exposed, you have it, you don’t even know you’re sick and you could potentially transmit it.”
Chin Hong explained that monkeypox is not a disease of humans but one of rodents like squirrels and mice, and occasionally monkeys, that accidentally got into humans. A comparable disease for humans is smallpox, which the World Health Organization declared eradicated in 1980. Because both diseases are of the orthopoxvirus family, smallpox vaccines give protection against monkeypox.
[caption id="attachment_957102" align="alignnone" width="768"] Dr Peter Chin Hong, an infectious disease specialist, -[/caption]
Initial symptoms are flu-like and can include fever, intense headache, muscle pain and swollen lymph nodes. Then comes a rash and lesions, usually on the face and extremities but there have been recent cases of rashes around the genitals.
The disease is spread when an animal bites a human or through blood, infected fluids or lesions on the animal. From human to human, it is spread by close contact with body secretions, saliva, respiratory droplets, intimate contact, or contact with contaminated materials such as clothing and bedding.
“But you need to have a lot of contact. If it’s 15 minutes for covid, you need to have three hours or more contact with somebody at close range for monkeypox. And with the respiratory droplets, it’s not aerosol-like fine droplets which can go into the air like influenza or covid. These are big, heavy drops that fall so if you’re wearing a mask you would be protected.”
Comparing it with other diseases, from least t
