The UK confirmed the first monkeypox case of the year on May 7, and the number has been steadily rising since then. As of May 24, 77 people had been infected, according to the UK Health Security Agency. At present, an average of five people are being infected daily in the UK.
Although the first infected have returned from Africa, the exact source of the remaining infected is not known. The fact that monkeypox is being seen in the rest of the world at the same time reinforces the possibility that the virus may be spreading before the month of May (before the first infection is confirmed).
In other words, it can be assumed that the monkeypox infection has been spreading in the community as 'dormant' or 'silent' since before the month of May. The monkeypox virus was first detected in monkeys in 1958, and in humans in 1970 in a Congolese 9-year-old boy. Currently, the virus is seen as an occasional outbreak in West and Central African countries, but it is also seen outside the African country as an imported disease. The last time a monkey virus was confirmed in Asia was in 2019 in Singapore from a Nigerian man.
The man was diagnosed with fever, chills and body aches on the second day of his arrival in Singapore. Skin lesions had started appearing from the third day. However, the virus did not spread to those who came in contact due to timely vigilance. Symptoms appear within 5 to 21 days of infection. Symptoms appear in two stages. In the first, there are symptoms like fever, headache and body aches, swollen lymph glands etc. In the second stage, it is especially associated with skin problems. Initially it spreads inside the mouth, face, hands, feet and other parts of the body.
These lesions fill with fluid, burst, dry and fall off. Generally, the infection lasts for 2 to 4 weeks. But complications can kill up to 10 percent of those infected. The death rate from the monkeypox virus strain in West Africa is only 1 percent. The virus, which is currently spreading outside Africa, is also a West African monkeypox virus strain, so no deaths have been reported so far. Scientists are currently confused and debating about the spread of monkeypox. Due to which, they are intensifying the study / research.
It is transmitted from animal to human and later from human to human. Infectious saliva is transmitted from person to person through the nose, mouth, eyes and exposed skin, and also through the clothes used by the infected. But in the current wave, in most cases, both of these methods (from animal to human and from human to human) are not clear. However, it has been speculated that the spread of the infection is not spreading through physical contact between men and women, which is not an established method.
However, Nigerian scientists have estimated that in 2017, this spread through physical contact. A recent article in the world-renowned medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases showed that a sample taken from a throat (throat swab) was PCR positive long after lesions had recovered. Because of this, some infected people had to stay in the hospital for more than three weeks.
This is because Covid-19 also showed PCR positive for a long time, but after ten days, the virus was not active. The monkeypox virus has now reached at least 18 countries around the world. The virus spreads from one country to another through infection.
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