Disclosure of a 'big surprise' about monkey pox
A doctor said that the monkeypox virus, and the way it was discovered in particular, was a "big surprise" for doctors, as the number of cases in the UK exceeded 100.
Dr Hugh Adler, who was part of a team at Royal Liverpool Hospital that treated a case of monkeypox in 2018, said experience had shown him that the virus could run deeper than a "superficial skin disease" due to the surprising ability to detect it in blood samples and throat swabs. , not only through rashes, and that tests came back positive months after patients became infected.
Dr Adler's comments come as 16 more cases of monkeypox have been discovered in England, according to figures released by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on Friday.
The latest cases bring the total confirmed in England since the first infection was reported on May 7, to 101.
Dr Adler, who works as a junior physician at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said: "The number of cases we're seeing shows that there was ongoing transmission that happened before early cases were picked up. And that's something that can happen with any infection. Never before, and so far, a network approach has been HCID [high-score infectious disease] is very effective in containing infection.”
"But we believe that as long as we are able to detect and diagnose cases, we should be able to cut the chains of transmission," he added.
Monkeypox is associated with smallpox, a fatal disease that was eradicated in 1980, although it is significantly less serious, with a fatality rate of three to six percent and a general recovery period of three to four weeks.
Initial symptoms include a high temperature, swollen lymph nodes, and a chickenpox-like rash.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control put the number of cases detected in countries where the virus is not endemic - including nearly a dozen countries in the European Union, the United States, Australia and the United Arab Emirates - at 219.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that cases found in recent weeks outside West and Central Africa, where the virus usually spreads, may be just the beginning of a more serious problem.
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