More than three months back, public health authorities in the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom started sounding the alarm about the occurrence of monkeypox.
Since then, Stat News reported, this so-called "long-neglected tropical disease," which, until this year, was more limited to periodic spillovers in the areas of Central and Western Africa, where the virus is endemic, has gone global.
According to a report from the World Health Organization, as of late August, 100 countries had reported almost 47,000 cases.
Such an explosive endemic has caught governments off-guard and sent researchers scrambling to understand the orthopoxvirus better causing it.
A healthcare worker prepares to administer a vaccine to Michael Nicot for the prevention of monkeypox at the Pride Center on July 12, 2022, in Wilton Manors, Florida.
5 Monkeypox Questions
Different from SARS-CoV-2, this disease does not start from scratch. Essentially, monkeypox is not a new virus. It was originally detected in research on monkeys at a Lab in Denmark in the late 1950s and identified as a human pathogen in 1970.
Nonetheless, with little attention from the international community, monkeypox studies received sparse funding over the succeeding decades, leaving a lot of key questions about the virus unanswered.
The present outbreak, which is distinctive both in the speed of transmission and the ways in which people become infected, has also prompted new ones.
Here are five of the commonly asked questions about the monkeypox virus:
1. Where has Monkeypox Originated?
This disease got its name since monkeys were the first-ever species identified to be infected with this poxvirus. However, it was noticed that the virus made the monkeys ill, which means that they were not the reservoir.
A lot of animal species can contract monkeypox. Squirrels, hedgehogs, anteaters, shrews, and prairie dogs, all can contact the virus, and under certain conditions, transfer and spread it to humans.
Nonetheless, a microbiologist cautioned that the identified rodents and other small mammals fall victim to the virus, not the reservoir.
2. Can Asymptomatic Individuals Transmit the Virus to Others?
Monkeypox prefers to duplicate in the skin and mucous membranes. That is the reason scientists are inclined to discover the highest concentrations of virus in the lesions of infected people.
It is also why it would be surprising that people with such lesions spread monkeypox to others. To others. Nevertheless, several small studies have raised concerns about such a possibility.
3. How Effective is the Vaccine When It Comes to Reducing Symptoms and Prevention of Infections?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization state that the available smallpox vaccines are approximately 85 percent effective against monkeypox.
Experts warned, though, that the highly cited number should not be taken at face value, specifically in the context of the present outbreak.
The percentage dates back to observational research which involves 245 individuals infected with monkeypox in Zaire between 1981 and 1986, and over 2,000 of their contacts.
People with a visible scar from injection with the first-generation vaccine against smallpox were roughly seven times less likely to contract monkeypox after exposure to an infected person than those who were unvaccinated.
4. Are People Inoculated with Smallpox Vaccines Decades Ago Protected from the Presently Spread Monkeypox Virus?
A MedicalXpress report said that while a number of studies offer hopeful indications that childhood smallpox vaccination offers some long-lasting protection decades after, health experts say "aging baby boomers whose arms may still bear the marks" of those injections during their childhood should not assume they are immune.
According to associate professor of population health and disease prevention Andrew Noymer, from the University of California, Irvine, he would not say there is no protection, but it's not something he would count on.
5. Will Monkeypox Continuously Infect Primarily, Men Engaging in Sexual Intercourse with Men?
A study published in the Science journal specified that sexual encounters play a vital role in transmission. Of the over 150 individuals in the UKHSA data set, 82 were invited for additional interviews focusing on their sexual health.
Out of 45 participants, 44 percent reported having more than ten sexual partners in the past three months, and 44 percent reported engaging in group sex during the incubation period.
In the US and Europe, monkeypox has thus far mainly affected males who engage in sex, also with males. However, historically, outbreaks that start in one community do not stay there.
Moreover, HIV commonly spread beyond gay and bisexual men in the 1980s, fueled partly by officials who ignored early warnings that "there was no such thing as a gay disease."
In the early 2000s, a drug-resistant bacteria outbreak was first detected in gay men, although eventually, it spread to other athletes and took its greatest toll on people in prison.
Related information about common monkeypox questions is shown on WIRED's YouTube video below:
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Check out more news and information on Monkeypox in Science Times.