Why has monkeypox emerged in separate populations across the world? Here’s what scientists are asking
Credit: UK Health Security Agency/Science Photo Library
“It’s eye-opening to see this kind of spread,” says Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California Los Angeles, who has studied monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for more than a decade.Called monkeypox because researchers first detected it in laboratory monkeys in 1958, the virus is thought instead to transmit from wild animals such as rodents to people — or from infected people.
Unlike SARS-CoV-2, which spreads through tiny air-borne droplets called aerosols, monkeypox is thought to spread from close contact with bodily fluids, such as saliva from coughing. That means a person with monkeypox is likely to infect far fewer close contacts than someone with SARS-CoV-2, Hooper says. Both viruses can cause flu-like symptoms, but monkeypox also triggers enlarged lymph nodes and, eventually, distinctive fluid-filled lesions on the face, hands and feet.
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