Recent headlines about the sudden onset of an unusual disease, which is spreading case by case across countries and continents, may, for some, evoke memories of early 2020.
But monkeypox is not COVID-19, in a good way.
Health officials around the world have turned their attention to a new outbreak of smallpox, a virus commonly found in Central and West Africa that has appeared in Europe and the United States in recent weeks. all in people who have not traveled to Africa.
But experts say that while it is important for public health officials to be on the lookout for smallpox, it is very unlikely that the virus will become an uncontrolled global pandemic in the same way that COVID-19 did. .
“Let’s face it – smallpox and COVID are not the same disease,” said Dr. Rosamund Lewis, head of the World Health Organization’s Smallpox Secretariat, in a public Q&A session on Monday. .
For starters, smallpox spreads much less easily than COVID-19. Scientists have been studying monkeypox since it was first discovered in humans more than 50 years ago. And its similarities to smallpox make it possible to fight in many of the same ways.
As a result, scientists are already familiar with how the monkey’s smallpox spreads, how it presents itself, and how to treat and contain it, giving health authorities a much greater advantage in containing it.
Here are some of the other ways in which the public health approach to monkeypox is different from COVID-19:
Scientists already know how it spreads, and it is different from COVID
Monkeypox usually requires very close contact to spread, most often skin-to-skin contact or prolonged physical contact with clothing or bedding worn by an infected person.
In contrast, COVID-19 spreads quickly and easily. The coronavirus can spread by simply talking to another person, or sharing a room, or, in rare cases, being in a room where an infected person had previously been.
“Transmission is really happening through close physical contact, skin-to-skin contact. It’s quite different from COVID in that regard,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO infectious disease epidemiologist.
The classic symptom of monkeypox is a rash that often begins on the face and then spreads to the limbs or other parts of a person’s body.
“The incubation period from the time of exposure to the onset of lesions is between five days and about 21 days, so it can be quite long,” said Dr. Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, an infectious disease doctor. virologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
According to experts, the current outbreak has seen some different patterns, in particular, that the rash begins first in the genital area and may not spread throughout the body.
Either way, experts say, the virus usually spreads through physical contact with this rash.
“It’s not a situation where if you walk past a grocery store, you’re at risk for smallpox,” said Jennifer McQuiston of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. briefing Monday.
People most likely to be at risk are close personal contacts of an infected person, such as family members or health care workers who have treated them, he said.
“Over the years we have seen that often the best way to deal with cases is to keep patients isolated so that they cannot spread the virus to close relatives and loved ones, and to proactively monitor those who are sick. contact so you can watch for symptoms, “McQuiston said.
With this version of the virus, people usually recover in two to four weeks, according to scientists, and the mortality rate is less than 1%.
Smallpox is less contagious than COVID-19
One factor that helped COVID-19 spread rapidly around the world was the fact that it is highly contagious. This is even more true for the variants that have emerged last year.
Epidemiologists point to the R0 value of a disease: the average number of people you would expect an infected person to transmit the disease to.
For a disease outbreak to grow, the R0 must be greater than 1. For the original version of COVID-19, the number was between 2 and 3. For the omicron variant, this number is about 8, according to found a recent study.
While the recent spread of monkeypox cases is alarming, the virus is far less contagious than COVID-19, according to Jo Walker, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.
“Most previous outbreak estimates have had an R0 less than one. With that, you can have groups of cases, even outbreaks, but they eventually go away on their own,” they said. “It could spread among humans, but not very efficiently in a way that could be sustained without being constantly reintroduced from animal populations.”
This is a major reason why public health authorities, including the WHO, are confident that cases of monkeypox will not be triggered suddenly. “This is a contentious situation,” Van Kerkhove said in a public hearing on Monday.
Because smallpox is closely related to smallpox, there are already vaccines
Smallpox and smallpox are members of the Orthopox virus family. 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 smallpox, according to the WHO, although this effectiveness decreases over time.
“These viruses are closely related to each other, and we now have the benefit of all these years of research, diagnosis and treatment and in vaccines that will be applied to the situation now,” said Lewis, of the WHO.
Some countries, including the United States, have kept smallpox vaccines in strategic reserve in the event of the virus re-emerging. Now, they can be used to contain a smallpox outbreak.
The FDA has two vaccines 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 stock, the CDC says, 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 exposed people from contracting smallpox and treating affected people,” said Dr. Raj Panjabi of the White House Pandemic Office. an interview with NPR.
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