Monkeypox virus disease outbreak

Close contacts of those infected with rare disease offered vaccines and told to isolate for up to 21 days.

“I think it’s possible that some of these outbreaks will be driven by superspreading events,” said Dr Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Southampton University. “For example, the Spanish health authorities are looking at a sauna as a site of single exposure that resulted in many secondary cases. The same studies suggest that a Belgian man contracted the virus on a recent trip to Portugal. Superspreader events may have boosted the outbreak since it arrived in Europe. But the virus can cause more serious illness in those with weakened immune systems, pregnant women and young children. While some monkeypox patients have been admitted to hospital, many confirmed cases that do not need specialist care are told to isolate at home until local health protection teams are confident they are no longer infectious. Under UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) guidance, the same high-risk contacts are advised to avoid immunosuppressed people, pregnant women and children under 12, as they are more vulnerable to serious infections.

The virus is not as easily transmitted as the SARS-CoV-2 virus that spurred the global COVID-19 pandemic. Experts believe the current monkeypox outbreak is ...

Rasmussen said a number of factors including increased global travel as well as climate change have accelerated the emergence and spread of viruses. Scientists are seeking to understand the origin of the current cases and whether anything about the virus has changed. The U.K. has begun to inoculate health care workers who may be at risk while caring for patients with the smallpox vaccine, which can also protect against monkeypox. People who suspect they have monkeypox should isolate and seek medical care. That should make its spread easier to contain once infections are identified, experts said. Most of the cases reported so far have been detected in the U.K., Spain and Portugal. There have also been cases in Canada and Australia, and a single case of monkeypox was confirmed in Boston, with public health officials saying more cases are likely to turn up in the United States.

Symptoms of monkeypox include fever, headaches and skin rashes starting on the face and spreading to the rest of the body.

4) US President Joe Biden on Sunday said that people should be on guard against monkeypox which has the potential for a "consequential" impact if it were to spread further. 9) Symptoms of monkeypox include fever, headaches, and skin rashes starting on the face and spreading to the rest of the body. Symptoms of monkeypox include fever, headaches and skin rashes starting on the face and spreading to the rest of the body.

Monkeypox can be spread through close contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedsheets, but sexual transmission has not yet been documented.

“It’s very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions on the genitals, hands or somewhere else, and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact,” Heymann hypothesized. “This is not COVID,” he said. Monkeypox typically causes fever, chills, rash, and lesions on the face or genitals. Madrid’s senior health official said on Monday that the Spanish capital has recorded 30 confirmed cases so far. WHO said confirmed cases have so far been the less severe West African group of monkeypox viruses and appeared to be linked to a virus that was first detected in exported cases from Nigeria to Britain, Israel and Singapore in 2018-2019. U.K. officials have said “a notable proportion” of the cases in Britain and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa and who are gay, bisexual or have sex with men.