Recent headlines about an unusual disease spreading rapidly across continents and countries may evoke images of early 2020.
Monkeypox is not COVID-19, aEUR” in the good sense.
Worldwide, health officials have focused their attention on a new epidemic of monkeypox. This virus is normally found in central and western Africa and has been seen in Europe and the U.S. in recent days aEUR” even among people who have never traveled to Africa.
Experts say that while public health officials should be vigilant for monkeypox, it is unlikely that the virus will cause a worldwide pandemic like COVID-19.
“Let’s just state straight off the top that monkeypox is not the same as COVID,” Dr. Rosamund L. Lewis, Head of Smallpox Secretariat, World Health Organization, said at a Q&A session Monday.
Monkeypox spreads more easily than COVID-19, for one. Since monkeypox was first found in humans over 50 years ago, scientists have been studying it. It is similar to smallpox and can be treated in many of its same ways.
Scientists are now better equipped to handle monkeypox, including how it spreads and how it presents.
These are just a few of the ways that the public health approach towards monkeypox differs from COVID-19.
To spread Monkeypox, close contact is required. This includes skin-to-skin contact or prolonged contact with bedding or clothes that were used by the infected.
COVID-19, however, spreads quickly. Coronavirus can be spread by simply talking to another person, sharing a space, or, in rare cases, entering a room where an infected person has been.
“Transmission occurs from close physical contact, skin to skin contact. In that sense, it’s very different from COVID,” explained Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO.
Monkeypox is the classic symptom. It starts on the skin and spreads to the limbs or other areas of the body.
“The time between exposure and the appearance of lesions can take anywhere from five to 21 days,” Dr. Boghuma Kabisen Titanji (emergency physician and virologist at Emory University, Atlanta) said.
Experts say the current outbreak shows different patterns. They state that the rash usually starts in the genital region and does not spread to the rest of the body.
Experts say that the most common way that the virus can spread is through contact with the rash.
“It’s not a situation in which if you pass someone in the grocery shop, they’re going be at risk for monkeypox,” Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a Monday briefing.
She said that close family members of infected people are most at risk.
McQuiston stated that it is often best to keep people who are sick isolated to prevent them from spreading the virus to loved ones. McQuiston also advised that patients should be proactive in following up with anyone they have contact with to monitor for signs.
Scientists find that this virus can be cured in as little as two to four weeks. The death rate is also lower than 1%.
COVID-19’s contagious nature was one of the factors that allowed it to spread quickly across the globe. This is even truer for the variants that were developed in the last year.
The R0 value of a disease is a EUR, which refers to the number of people that you would expect to be infected by the disease.
R0 must be greater than 1 in order for a disease outbreak grow. The R0 value for COVID-19 was between 2 and 3. A recent study has found that the number for the omicron version is around 8.
According to Jo Walker, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health, although the recent outbreak of monkeypox cases has been alarming, the virus remains far less contagious that COVID-19.
“Most of the R0s from previous outbreaks were less than one,” they said. They said that you could have outbreaks or clusters of cases but eventually they will die off on their own. It could spread to humans but not in an efficient way that could sustain itself without being constantly reintroduced to animal populations.
This is why public health officials, including WHO, express confidence that monkeypox cases will not spike. Van Kerkhove stated Monday that “this is a manageable situation.”
Both smallpox, and monkeypox, are members of the Orthopox virus family. A worldwide vaccination campaign was successful in eliminating smallpox from the world, killing millions.
According to the WHO, smallpox vaccines are about 85% effective against monkeypox. However, this effectiveness decreases over time.
Lewis, of the WHO, stated that “these viruses are closely related to one another and now we have all those years worth of research and diagnostics as well as treatments and vaccines that will be applied to the situation now.”
Smallpox vaccines have been kept in reserve by some countries, including the U.S. in case of a reemergence. These vaccines can now be used to control a monkeypox epidemic.
Two vaccines have been approved by the FDA for smallpox.
Jynneos is a two-dose vaccine approved for use against monkeypox. The CDC estimates that there are approximately a thousand doses in the Strategic National Stockpile. More will be available over the next few months.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Raj Panjabi from the White House pandemic team stated that “We have already worked in order to secure sufficient supply effective treatments and vaccines for preventing those exposed from contracting Monkeypox”
