The World Health Organization (WHO) said in its latest update on Sunday that it had received 257 confirmed cases of monkey pox and about 120 suspected cases in 23 countries as of Thursday.
And inside United StatesThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has registered 12 cases in eight states as of Friday afternoon.
The World Health Organization reports that monkeys have reported 1,365 cases of the virus and 69 deaths in the five most common African countries.
The disease is reported in different periods from mid-December to the end of May.
No deaths have been reported in non-infected countries.
“Since 2017, some deaths from monkey pox in West Africa have been associated with younger or untreated HIV infection,” the WHO said in a statement.
The agency said the level of global public health risk was moderate, adding that “this is the first time that cases and groups of monkey flu cases have been reported simultaneously in different geographical areas of the World Health Organization, native to western or central Africa.”
Monkey box is a very rare viral disease.
The disease eventually develops into a rash and sores, which spread and develop throughout the body. The disease usually lasts for two to four weeks.
Monkey pox is not a sexually transmitted disease, but if one has active rash it can be spread through close contact.
Scientists are working to sort the genetic code of virus samples from patients with the outbreak, but to learn more about its origin, the World Health Organization says “preliminary data confirm that the gene belongs to the West African ape virus family.”
In retrospect, scientists in the United Kingdom predicted monkey pox in 1988, and a scientific report released at the time said that “over time, the average and duration of monkey box infections will increase.”
At the time, monkeys were so rare that health workers discovered only a few cases in West and Central Africa.
People became almost exclusively infected with rodents, and then the virus spread only to a small number of people.
But scientists with “foresight” have warned that these sporadic cases will increase and spread geographically over time, as the NPR claims.
“Every paper on the past eruptions of the monkey box, there is always a warning about how we should prepare for more eruptions in the future,” Bokoma Detonji, an epidemiologist at Emory University, told U.S. Radio. “This prediction has already been proven.”
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