Monkeypox has been a globally neglected public health problem in parts of Africa for decades, but cases began to be reported outside countries where it is endemic in May.
It generally causes mild to moderate symptoms, including fever, fatigue and the hallmark painful skin lesions, that resolve within a few weeks. Five people have died in the current outbreak, all of them in Africa.
Beyond Africa, monkeypox is spreading chiefly in men who have sex with men, putting sexual health clinics on alert for new cases.
“I remember clearly … saying that ‘I think I’m going to die,’ because I can’t eat, I can’t drink. I can’t even swallow my own spit,” said Harun Tulunay, 35, a sexual health advocate who was hospitalised with monkeypox in London earlier this month but has since recovered.
“SUSTAINED TRANSMISSION”
While monkeypox is not causing large numbers of deaths globally, an unpleasant virus establishing itself in new populations is still bad news, scientists said.
Flahault’s group has modeled three scenarios for the coming months, all of which include “sustained transmission,” either between men who have sex with men; beyond these groups and possibly into more vulnerable populations, like children, or between humans and animals.
The latter scenario risks the establishment of a monkeypox reservoir in animals in new countries, as it has in parts of west and central Africa, said Flahault.
Ongoing transmission could also lead to mutations that make the virus more efficient at spreading in humans, scientists said.
On Tuesday, German scientists released a study ahead of peer review that found mutations in one of the 47 cases they sequenced that could help monkeypox spread in people more easily.
“The alarm bell was going off (in Africa) but we kept hitting the snooze button. Now it’s time to wake up and do something about it,” Rimoin said. “An infection anywhere is potentially an infection everywhere.”
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