“We don’t really know whether it is too late to contain Monkeypox”
The fact that this virus has appeared in Europe in a large number of cases, an increasing number of cases, is clearly cause for some concern and it does suggest that there may have been undetected transmission for a while.
What we don’t know is how long that may have been. We don’t know if it is weeks, months or possibly a couple of years. It really is something that needs to be ascertained through deeper investigation of the initial cases that were reported and outbreak investigation of the clusters from which these cases arose. So, we don’t really know whether it is too late to contain.
There have been deaths in Africa over all these years. There have been almost 70 or so deaths reported so far in 2022 from five African countries.
If we look at things like Lassa fever, we’ve seen an upward trend in Lassa fever, again a disease of mammalian origin in Africa. We see the upward trend in Ebola outbreaks. You can count them now almost on a three-monthly basis. We used to have three-five years between Ebola outbreaks at least. Now, it’s lucky if we have three-five months…..
