Monkeypox virus outbreak

2022 - 5 - 19

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Image courtesy of "Reuters"

Explainer: Why monkeypox cases are spreading in Europe, US (Reuters)

The outbreaks are raising alarm because the viral disease, which spreads through close contact and was first found in monkeys, mostly occurs in west and central ...

Smallpox was eradicated by vaccination in 1980, and the shot has since been phased out. Only the first case reported on May 6 had recently traveled to Nigeria. The virus spreads through close contact, both in spillovers from animals and, less commonly, between humans. It is usually mild, although there are two main strains: the Congo strain, which is more severe – with up to 10% mortality – and the West African strain, which has a fatality rate in about 1% of cases. "Historically, there have been very few cases exported. The UK cases have been reported as the West African strain.

What is monkeypox and where is it spreading? (Deseret News)

A Massachusetts man has been diagnosed with monkeypox, a viral infection that has been recently found in clusters in Europe and Canada.

In humans, symptoms are mild but not unlike the symptoms of smallpox. The CDC says 10% of cases in Africa are fatal. The CDC said that was the first time cases were reported outside of Africa. It is also possible that eating meat of an animal infected with the virus may lead to infection. The latest case is getting more attention because of recent unusual clusters in other countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says monkeypox was first seen in 1958 during two outbreaks of a pox-like illness that spread through colonies of monkeys who were research subjects.

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Image courtesy of "Globalnews.ca"

Monkeypox has Canadian researchers scrambling. Why, and how ... (Globalnews.ca)

Monkeypox is an orthopoxvirus that causes disease, typically transmitted to humans from animals, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) ...

In Portugal, five cases of monkeypox have been found, with 15 more people being tested. The U.K. announced on Monday that they have detected four more cases of monkeypox, bringing the country’s total up to seven cases. As the situation evolves we will continue to keep Canadians informed.” The World Health Organization estimates there are thousands of monkeypox infections in about a dozen African countries every year. Health officials in Spain are investigating after eight men started showing symptoms of the viral infection. There is no cure for the virus, but most people recover from a monkeypox infection within a few weeks. Presumably they resulted from travel, but many of these cases have no travel history,” she said. “It’s also fair to say that we don’t know too much about this. Urgent investigations of the new cases are important as “they could suggest a novel means of spread or a change in the virus, but this is all to be determined,” she said. No confirmed cases of monkeypox have been reported to PHAC as of Thursday morning, the agency told Global News. However, 17 suspected cases of the virus are under investigation in Montreal. However, with the monkeypox cases we’re seeing now, there doesn’t appear to be a connection with rodents, with multiple cases being reported in Europe and North America, Rasmussen said. Recent cases of the monkeypox have researchers in Canada and elsewhere in the world trying to figure out just how widespread the virus is.

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Image courtesy of "New York Magazine"

What the World Needed Now Was a Monkeypox Outbreak (New York Magazine)

Cases of monkeypox, a virus typically confined to West and Central Africa, have recently turned up in several countries, including the U.K., Spain, ...

While acknowledging that the outbreak is unusual, experts stressed that any risk to the public is low, given monkeypox’s relatively low rate of contagiousness. Since then, eight more cases have been confirmed in the U.K., all of them among people who had no obvious connection to the first one. In the U.K., the first case was confirmed on May 7 in a man who had been in Nigeria and had developed a rash before returning. One strain of monkeypox is highly deadly, with a fatality rate of about 10 percent; another strain, which is the one detected in the U.K., causes death in less than 1 percent of cases. Health authorities said he was in “good condition” and “poses no risk to the public.” In 2003, a Midwest outbreak tied to travel in Ghana affected more than 70 people, though only two fell seriously ill and no one died.

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Image courtesy of "The Atlantic"

So, Have You Heard About Monkeypox? (The Atlantic)

The virus behind monkeypox is a close relative of the one that caused smallpox but is less deadly and less transmissible, causing symptoms that include fever ...

The oft-cited fatality rate of about 10 percent applies to a strain that infected people in the Congo Basin. The West African strain, which several of the current cases have been linked to, has a fatality rate closer to 1 percent—and that’s in poor, rural populations. And as another bioterrorism precaution, stockpiles of three smallpox vaccines are large enough “to vaccinate basically everyone in the U.S.” Inglesby said. It’s urgent to identify people early, get them treatment, and identify contacts.” It helps that one common symptom is an obvious rash, which looks like an extreme version of chickenpox. As for the U.S., “there are currently no additional suspected cases” beyond the individual in Massachusetts, McCollum told me. Are they the work of a new and more transmissible strain of monkeypox? A 2012 study suggested that the virus can persist in aerosols for several days—but that was under artificial laboratory conditions, and persistence is just one small part of the infection process. For decades, a few scientists have voiced concerns that the monkeypox virus could have become better at infecting people—ironically because we eradicated its relative, smallpox, in the late 1970s. “I’ve seen a lot of people writing as if everything we know about monkeypox is definitive and finalized, but the reality is that it is still a rare zoonotic infection,” she said. “I don’t think people should be freaking out at this stage,” Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington told me, “but I don’t trust my own gut feelings anymore, because I’m so sick of all this shit that I tend to be optimistic.” Then again, Marr is less certain about monkeypox than she was about COVID. And Titanji notes that our knowledge of monkeypox is based on just 1,500 or so recorded cases, as of 2018. Rarely, monkeypox makes it to other continents, and when it does, outbreaks “are so small, they’re measured in single digits,” Thomas Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me. This suggests that the monkeypox virus may be surreptitiously spreading from person to person, with some number of undetected cases.

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Image courtesy of "Green Matters"

Monkeypox Virus Outbreak: Here's What You Need to Know (Green Matters)

First it was coronavirus — now it's monkeypox. Many across North America are currently concerned about a potential outbreak of a disease that isn't commonly ...

And since May 2022, nine people in the U.K. have reported the disease, with the first case having recently gone to Nigeria. And although this sounds like a pretty shocking situation, it isn't the first time in recent years it's happened. What we have seen in the United Kingdom, in Spain and in Europe, has been novel and that gives us cause for concern, but, I think appropriately, people should not be afraid of monkeypox right now," Dr. Paul Biddinger of Mass General Brigham stated, per CNN. Like COVID, Monkeypox is a virus that's most commonly found in West Africa, according to a press release from the U.K. It's generally spread through close contact, and even though most recover within weeks, it can result in hospitalization. Government officials are encouraging sexually active individuals to take note of rashes, and to contact a health service immediately if anything arises, with proper notice of their situation. People are most often exposed to the disease from bites or scratches from rodents or wild game.

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Image courtesy of "nj.com"

Monkeypox virus outbreak: What are the symptoms? Is it contagious? (nj.com)

U.S. health officials are investigating the first case of monkeypox in the country for 2022. Here is a guide to the symptoms and what to do if you think you ...

The illness usually lasts for two to four weeks before it runs its course through the body. If you develop symptoms in line with monkeypox or were exposed to someone with the disease, it is best to contact your doctor. What are the symptoms of monkeypox in humans? But it was not until 1970 when the first human case of monkeypox surfaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the CDC, researchers first discovered monkeypox in 1958 when a “pox-like” outbreak appeared on monkeys being kept for research, which is how the disease “monkeypox” got its name. U.S. health officials are investigating the first case of monkeypox in the country for 2022 in Massachusetts.

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