There are vaccines, there are therapeutics, we have a lot of experience dealing with it, certainly in Africa."Īlso, he noted, "At the beginning of the pandemic, it was spreading without people realizing it they were asymptomatic. We've known about monkeypox for more than 60 years. We had no therapeutics, we had no vaccines, we didn't know anything about that disease. When the pandemic started, SARS CoV-2, which is the virus that causes COVID, we knew nothing about it, it was a brand new virus.
"But remember, this is very different than COVID. "This should be taken seriously, and it is being taken seriously by public health officials," LaPook said. "We need to slow it down, but it does not spread in the air and we have vaccines to protect against it." Heymann said studies should be conducted rapidly to determine if monkeypox could be spread by people without symptoms and that populations at risk of the disease should take precautions to protect themselves. He emphasized that the disease was unlikely to trigger widespread transmission. "And then there were these international events that seeded the outbreak around the world, into the U.S. "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. Heymann, who is also a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the monkeypox outbreak was likely a random event that might be traceable to a single infection. Authorities in Portugal and Spain also said their cases were in men who mostly had sex with other men and whose infections were picked up when they sought help for lesions at sexual health clinics. 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. Susan Hopkins, said she expected more monkeypox cases to be identified in the country "on a daily basis." On Sunday, the chief medical adviser of Britain's Health Security Agency, Dr. "By nature, sexual activity involves intimate contact, which one would expect to increase the likelihood of transmission, whatever a person's sexual orientation and irrespective of the mode of transmission," said Mike Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London. Other scientists have pointed out that it will be difficult to disentangle whether it is sex itself or the close contact related to sex that has driven the recent spread of monkeypox across Europe. The agency's Europe director warned that as summer begins across the continent, mass gatherings, festivals and parties could accelerate the spread of monkeypox. agency said the outbreak is "a highly unusual event" and said the fact that cases are being seen in so many different countries suggests the disease may have been silently spreading for some time. 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. In recent years, the disease has been fatal in up to 6% of infections, but no deaths have been reported among the current cases. Vaccines against smallpox, a related disease, are also effective in preventing monkeypox and some antiviral drugs are being developed. Most people recover from the disease within several weeks without requiring hospitalization. It can be spread through close contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedsheets, but sexual transmission has not yet been documented. Monkeypox typically causes fever, chills, rash, and lesions on the face or genitals. Heymann chaired an urgent meeting of WHO's advisory group on infectious disease threats on Friday to assess the ongoing epidemic and said there was no evidence to suggest that monkeypox might have mutated into a more infectious form. Enrique Ruiz Escudero said authorities are investigating possible links between a recent Gay Pride event in the Canary Islands, which drew some 80,000 people, and cases at a Madrid sauna. Madrid's senior health official said on Monday that the Spanish capital has recorded 30 confirmed cases so far. Jon LaPook it's unusual that we are seeing cases happening in several countries at the same time: "We've never seen that."
She told CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. "It's important to know that this virus really does require close personal contact," said Dr.
The virus is spread through body fluids, skin and respiratory droplets.