LSHTM expert comments on the current monkeypox outbreak

Professor David Heymann, infectious illness epidemiologist at LSHTM, comments on the current monkeypox outbreak.

“In most situations human transmission of monkeypox is assumed to happen when somebody has shut bodily contact with an open sore of an individual who’s contaminated with monkeypox. It isn’t a sexually transmitted an infection and may transmit wherever there may be bodily contact with a monkeypox sore positioned anyplace on the physique.  

“Elevated human transmission is a typical consequence of many rising and re-emerging infections – they’re amplified, or elevated, in transmission, usually by individuals’s actions or elements which make situations extra favorable for an infection to unfold.

“A number of years in the past, specialists from Nigeria famous that some individuals with monkeypox an infection had open sores in the genital area however there was no proof that monkeypox had been transmitted by sexual contact. In actual fact, in Nigeria monkeypox doesn’t look like transmitted by individual to individual contact – many circumstances seem to have occurred by way of the virus leaping from animal hosts to individuals residing in areas the place monkeypox is current.

“One in every of the hypotheses about the obvious human to human transmission of monkeypox outdoors Africa at this time is that the outbreak is being attributable to bodily contact with open sores which can be in the genital space, and that worldwide gatherings the place one of these behaviour occurred with contaminated individuals carrying an infection to their house nation has led to international unfold. This speculation shouldn’t be confirmed and is being studied by genetic sequencing and different epidemiological strategies.

“It can be crucial to not leap to conclusions or stigmatise sure teams or people. Though the total threat seems to be small, everybody ought to stay vigilant as public well being companies work to include this outbreak as a result of monkeypox has the potential to have an effect on anybody uncovered with shut contact to somebody who has the an infection.”