About a hundred people in about twenty countries, mainly in Europe, have been affected by monkey pox, a disease that causes fever, headaches and blisters. There are both vaccines and drugs that work, but most recover in just a few weeks without treatment.
Nevertheless, researchers around the world are concerned about the spread of the mild and not very contagious disease. The main reason is that the monkey cup virus behaves in a new way.
Apkoppor has previously most commonly affected people in central and western Africa, where the infection is found in monkeys and rodents. It is very unusual for monkey pox to spread outside Africa. The infection has occurred via travel or through the import of infected animals.
What is happening now breaks the pattern. According to the journal Nature, more people have been infected outside Africa in the past week than the total number infected outside the African continent since 1970, when the disease was first detected in humans.
Monkey pox is caused by a virus called the orthopox virus. It is far from as contagious as the sars-cov-2 virus behind the covid-19 pandemic. Monkey pox spreads mainly through close contacts between people and when exchanging body fluids. So far, the virus seems to have spread mainly among men who have had sex with men, but the researchers believe that it may be a coincidence.
So far, only one person has fallen ill in Sweden. But Swedish doctors are concerned that the infection may increase during the summer as sexually transmitted diseases usually spread faster. But even now, the rapid spread in Europe is worrying, researchers say. We already know that the sars-cov-2 virus can spread asymptomatically, ie without the infected person showing any symptoms. Monkey pox, on the other hand, gives clear symptoms, especially in the form of fluid-filled blisters. That the virus is now spreading so quickly and “quietly” is unexpected, and makes it more difficult to monitor the spread of infection. But a new pandemic is hardly to be expected.
On Thursday it came first genetic mapping of the monkey pox virus that is now outside Africa. The early results from researchers in Portugal show that it is a virus strain that comes from West Africa. It seems to cause a milder disease than the virus found in central Africa. Many questions remain to be answered. Hopefully, the continued mapping can, for example, provide answers as to whether the virus’ rapid spread is due to the fact that it has mutated and therefore become more contagious.
But unlike the sars-cov-2 virus (which is an RNA virus), the orthopox virus belongs to the so-called DNA viruses. They are more stable and better at detecting and repairing mutations in the genome than the RNA virus. Experts therefore believe that it is unlikely that the apocopus virus has mutated and become more contagious. It is therefore also probable that the vaccines available against smallpox also protect against monkey smallpox.
Read more: A case of monkey pox confirmed in Denmark