Should I Worry About Monkeypox?
A laboratory technician picks up suspected monkeypox samples to be tested at the microbiology laboratory of La Paz Hospital in Madrid.
Photographer: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty ImagesHi folks, it’s Kristen, logging on from our London office. The UK is where the current outbreak of monkeypox in the US and Europe was first identified, and public health experts here are mulling what steps might need to be taken to combat the spread. This week in our Sunday Q&A a reader wonders how much they should worry about the virus. But first...
How is monkeypox manifesting in the US and Europe? Are people dying? Are they experiencing severe illness? How long does it last? — Erica, Santa Monica, California
As monkeypox cases have risen, it’s been hard to resist thinking: “Not this again!” But it’s important to keep in mind that monkeypox and Covid are two distinct viruses. They don’t spread the same way, and the symptoms are different. While Covid has killed more than a million people in the US alone, so far just one death has been linked to monkeypox in the current outbreak across more than 40 nations.
“Most cases are not serious but do require isolation,” says Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
There have been more than 100 monkeypox cases spotted in the US, and more than 2,500 globally. (The World Health Organization is weighing changing the name of the virus, which many scientists have said is stigmatizing and discriminatory.)
Rather than the sheer number of cases, what has gotten this particular virus so many headlines recently is where it’s occurring: Monkeypox is established in parts of Africa, but the current outbreak seems to have no epidemiological links to those areas.