Finance
While the monkeypox virus has been detected in 75 countries in just three months, it may not spread as quickly as SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, according to a US infectious disease expert.
The recent outbreak, which was first reported from the UK on May 7, now has over 16,000 cases and five deaths in Africa, and is primarily affecting men who have sex with men.
Monkeypox is more difficult to transmit than Covid, according to Faheem Younus, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the University of Maryland.
Taking to Twitter, Faheem said: “Monkeypox requires close skin contact with lesions, fluid. Soiled surfaces and beddings are also a risk. (But) rarely respiratory droplets can transmit.”
Again, Covid is a novel virus, but monkeypox is not a new virus and importantly “we have available vaccines to fight it”. In the case of Covid, vaccines had to be developed.
“Covid is peculiar because it is a novel viral strain, easily transmissible through respiratory route, attacks a vital organ (lungs) and is deadly.
“If Covid is like a snake bite, monkeypox is like bed bugs,” the professor wrote on the microblogging site.
However, monkeypox is still “important and concerning, but not the same” as Covid.
Cautioning people to refrain from “falling for fear mongering”, he explained that to curb the recent outbreak, point-of-care testing must be made widely available as opposed to the current state where only specialised labs can perform the tests. As a result, the “turnaround times are many days allowing the disease to spread unchecked”.
He also suggested “strategic use of (ring) vaccination where outbreaks are identified”.
Ring vaccination, which has been used successfully to contain smallpox and Ebola outbreaks, involves vaccinating a “ring” of people around them rather than an entire population, ideally within four days of exposure.
Younus also predicted that the cases would likely rise for months before falling. The disease may also spread in specific demographics and geographical areas.
He did, however, warn people to avoid “google experts; fear mongering, turning the infection into a business; virus politicization; and stigmatization of any group.”
He also praised WHO’s recent decision to declare the virus a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) as “the right precautionary step by WHO.”
Source:OCN
