The recent headlines about the sudden onset of an unusual disease spreading by chance in countries and continents may bring back memories of some from the beginning of 2020.
But monkeypox is not COVID-19 – in a good way.
Healthcare professionals around the world have turned their attention to a new outbreak of monkeypox, a virus commonly found in Central and West Africa that has emerged in Europe and the United States in recent weeks – even in people who have not traveled to Africa.
But experts say that while it’s important for public health officials to watch out for monkeypox, the virus is unlikely to become an uncontrolled global pandemic in the same way that COVID-19 did.
“Let’s just say right away that monkeypox and COVID are not the same disease,” said Dr Rosamund Lewis, head of the World Health Organization’s smallpox secretariat, at a public question and answer session on Monday.
For starters, monkeypox is much easier to spread than COVID-19. Scientists have been studying monkeypox since it was discovered in humans more than 50 years ago. And its resemblance to smallpox means that it can be fought in many of the same ways.
As a result, scientists are already aware of how monkeypox spreads, how it manifests itself, and how to treat and control it – giving health authorities a much greater advantage in controlling it.
Here are some of the other ways in which public health approaches to monkeypox differ from COVID-19:
Scientists already know how it spreads and is different from COVID
Monkeypox usually requires very close contact for spread – most often skin-to-skin contact or prolonged physical contact with clothing or bedding used by an infected person.
In contrast, COVID-19 spreads quickly and easily. The coronavirus can be spread simply by talking to another person or sharing a room, or in rare cases when you are in a room where a person has previously been infected.
“Transmission really happens from close physical contact, skin-to-skin contact. In that sense, it’s quite different from COVID,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist on infectious diseases.
The classic symptom of monkeypox is a rash that often begins on the face and then spreads to the limbs or other parts of the body.
“The incubation period from the time of exposure to the time of the lesions is anywhere from five days to about 21 days, so it can be quite long,” said Dr. Boguma Kabisen Titanji, an infectious disease doctor and virologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
Experts say the current outbreak has some different patterns – in particular, that the rash starts first in the genital area and may not spread to the body.
Either way, experts say, the virus is usually spread through physical contact with the rash.
“It’s not a situation where if you walk past someone in a grocery store, they’ll be at risk for monkeypox,” said Dr. Jennifer McQueston of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention at a briefing Monday.
People most likely to be at risk are close personal contacts of an infected person, such as household members or health professionals who may have treated them, she said.
We have seen over the years that often the best way to deal with cases is to keep patients isolated so that they cannot spread the virus to close family members and relatives, and to continue to be active with those the patient comes in contact with. so he can watch for symptoms, “McQueston said.
With this version of the virus, people usually recover in two to four weeks, scientists have found, and mortality is below 1%.
Monkeypox is less contagious than COVID-19
One factor that helped COVID-19 spread rapidly around the world was the fact that it was highly contagious. This is even more true for the options that have emerged in the last year.
Epidemiologists indicate the R0 value of the disease – the average number of people you would expect an infected person to transmit the disease.
For the outbreak to grow, R0 must be higher than 1. For the original version of COVID-19, the number was somewhere between 2 and 3. For the omicron variant, the number is about 8, a recent study found.
Although the recent spread of monkeypox is alarming, the virus is far less contagious than COVID-19, according to Joe Walker, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health.
“Most estimates from earlier outbreaks had an R0 of less than one. With this, you can have groups of cases, even outbreaks, but they will eventually disappear on their own, “they said. “It can spread among humans, but not very effectively in a way that could be sustained without being constantly reintroduced by animal populations.”
This is a big reason why public health authorities, including the WHO, are confident that the incidence of monkeypox will not suddenly increase. “This is a manageable situation,” Van Kerch said at a public hearing on Monday.
Because monkeypox is closely related to smallpox, vaccines are now available
Monkeypox and smallpox are members of the Orthopox family of viruses. Smallpox, which once killed millions of people each year, was eradicated in 1980 by a successful global vaccine campaign.
The smallpox vaccine is about 85% effective against monkeypox, says the WHO, although this effectiveness has declined over time.
“These viruses are closely linked and we now benefit from all these years of research and diagnosis and treatment and vaccines that will be applied to the situation now,” said Lewis of the WHO.
Some countries, including the United States, keep smallpox vaccines in strategic reserve in case the virus ever reappears. Now they can be used to limit the outbreak of monkeypox.
The FDA has two vaccines that are already approved for use against smallpox.
One, a two-dose vaccine called Jynneos, is also approved for use against monkeypox. About a thousand doses are available in the strategic national reserve, the CDC said, and the company will provide more in the coming months.
“We have already worked to ensure a sufficient supply of effective treatments and vaccines to prevent monkeypox infection and treat people who have been affected,” said Dr Raj Punjabi of the White House Pandemic Service in an interview with NPR.
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