“We are detecting more cases every day,” Susan Hopkins, the chief medical officer of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), told the BBC.
Last week, twenty patients had been identified and a new report will be published Monday "with the figures for the weekend", said Ms. Hopkins.
Several European countries have identified cases of monkeypox, which could accelerate in Europe, said Friday a regional official of the World Health Organization (WHO).
"In the cases we've seen so far in the UK, the vast majority of people recover on their own," Ms Hopkins said.
She described monkeypox as 'a new infectious disease that is spreading in our community' with 'cases that have no identified contact with an individual from West Africa', where the disease was previously present. .
Transmission is seen "primarily in individuals who identify as homosexual or bisexual or in men who have sex with men", she said, noting that the transmission can be explained by the "frequent contact narrow as they may have".
She called for being alert to the slightest symptom while stressing that the risk for the population as a whole was "extremely low".
While there is no vaccine for monkeypox, which is self-curing, a smallpox vaccine can be used to protect contact cases, Dr Hopkins explained.
Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi told the same television channel that the government was taking the matter "very, very seriously" and that the UK had started buying doses of smallpox vaccine.
© 2022 AFP