![]() ![]() Its near-simultaneous appearance in several countries where it does not normally spread alarmed public health authorities and suggested the virus had been spreading undetected for some time, probably years. Key BackgroundĮxperts have long feared monkeypox had the potential to one day spread and fill the void left behind by smallpox, though past outbreaks were usually limited and evidence suggested the virus does not transmit easily between people. "It's an important part of the transmission jigsaw," said Jake Dunning, senior fellow at the Pandemic Sciences Institute at Oxford University, "but personally I want to see it joined up with other pieces.How to protect yourself? Officials recommend all high risk people to get vaccinated -though it’s not clear how protective the shots will be and supplies are short-and for gay and bisexual men to limit risky behaviors involving sex, notably reducing the number of sexual partners, especially anonymous or group encounters, which data suggests is already happening. Other scientists said the work was robust but needed clinical data before it could be labeled definitive or applied globally. "These are urgent questions that need answers," said Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, assistant professor of medicine at Emory University, Atlanta. Independent experts said the findings could have important implications for global infection control, if supported by other studies. ![]() Many richer countries have vaccinated high-risk populations to curb the outbreak, but shots are limited and there are none available in Africa. The study raises questions over tackling monkeypox worldwide, including whether asking people to isolate when symptoms appear is enough to stop the virus spreading. This indicated that "considerable" transmission happened before the appearance or detection of symptoms has taken place, the researchers wrote in the paper published in the British Medical Journal.įour days was the longest period before symptoms began that transmission was detected, and the team said up to 53% of transmission may have taken place before symptoms began. Using two statistical models, they found that the median serial interval was shorter than the median incubation period. Researchers analysed the "serial interval" - the time from when symptoms began in the first case to when they began in a connected case - as well as the incubation period, the typical time from exposure to the virus to the onset of symptoms. Their average age was 38, and 95% of the patients reported being gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men. To find out more about how monkeypox was transmitting in Britain, a team from the UK Health Security Agency used routine surveillance and contact tracing data for 2,746 people in the country who tested positive between May and August. The virus is known to spread through close contact and causes symptoms including fever, body aches and often painful pus-filled skin lesions. Although cases have peaked in many countries, this week the World Health Organization said the outbreak still represented a global health emergency. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been almost 78,000 confirmed cases and 36 deaths since, according to the U.S. Monkeypox, a relatively mild viral illness that is endemic in several countries in western and central Africa, exploded around the world earlier this year, with outbreaks in dozens of countries where it had never previously appeared. It was previously thought that monkeypox was almost entirely spread by people who were already sick, although pre-symptomatic transmission had not been ruled out and some routine screening had picked up cases without symptoms. LONDON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Monkeypox can spread before symptoms appear, British researchers said on Wednesday, providing the first evidence indicating the virus can be transmitted this way. ![]()
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