According to Faheem Younus, Chief of Infectious Diseases from the University of Maryland, unlike COVID, which was airborne, monkeypox is harder to transmit.
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.”
Monkeypox and COVID
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.
Advertisement
“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 However, monkeypox is still “important and concerning, but not the same” as COVID.
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, means to vaccinate a “ring” of people around them rather than vaccinating an entire population, ideally within four days of exposure.
Further, Younus also projected that the cases will likely rise for months before they fall. The disease may also spread in specific groups and geographies.
However, he urged people to avoid “google experts; fear mongering, turning the infection into business; politicization of the virus; stigmatization of any group”.
He also lauded the World Health Organization’s recent move to declare the virus a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) as “the right precautionary step by WHO”.
Source: IANS
