Britain is stocking up on thousands of monkeypox vaccines and treatments amid fears the current spate of cases is only the tip of the iceberg.
Nine Britons have been diagnosed with the contagious virus so far and the majority of cases are not linked, suggesting it is spreading more widely.
The UK’s drug watchdog told MailOnline it was monitoring the current outbreak and ‘working with companies to speedily bring forward suitable treatments’.
Health chiefs also revealed to MailOnline they have bought thousands of vaccine doses and are already deploying them to close contacts of infected Britons.
Antiviral drugs and jabs designed to target smallpox have cross protection against monkeypox, with the two viruses genetically very similar.
The latest outbreak has been described as ‘unusual’ by experts because person-to-person transmission of monkeypox was thought to be extremely rare.
Six of Britain’s cases are in gay or bisexual men, which officials say is ‘highly suggestive of spread in sexual networks’.
Cases have also been announced in the US, Spain and Portugal, making it the most widespread monkeypox outbreak to date. Canada also has suspected cases.
By Connor Boyd Deputy Health Editor For Mailonline
Published: 10:46, 19 May 2022 | Updated: 16:56, 19 May 2022
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expressed concern Tuesday about an unusual outbreak of monkeypox in the United Kingdom, suggesting there appears to be at least some undetected transmission of the virus there and warning of the possibility that the outbreak could spread beyond U.K. borders.
“We do have a level of concern that this is very different than what we typically think of from monkeypox. And I think we have some concern that there could be spread outside the U.K associated with this,” Jennifer McQuiston, a senior CDC official, told STAT in an interview.
Seven confirmed and one probable case of monkeypox have been discovered in the U.K. since early May — an unusually large number given that human monkeypox cases are uncommon, and are especially rare outside West and Central Africa. While one of the cases had recently traveled to Nigeria, where monkeypox is endemic, the others appear to have contracted the virus in the U.K. None of the people infected domestically has any known connections with the traveler and the timing of the onset of the cases suggest he was not the source of those infections.
Original article here: https://www.statnews.com/2022/05/17/cdc-expresses-concern-about-possibility-of-undetected-monkeypox-spread-in-u-k/
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