1:00 pm
Sunday 06 November 2022
A team of scientists has indicated that monkeypox patients can shed the virus 4 days before symptoms appear.
Experts from the UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA) now estimate that more than half of the cases during the summer outbreak, which mainly affected gay and bisexual men, occurred this way.
In the first trial of its kind, the researchers said that early transmission of symptoms may be more “substantial” than previously thought.
Infectious disease specialists said it was raising “urgent” questions about current strategies for containing the virus that causes the rash.
Britain’s monkeypox outbreak has slowed since it broke out in the summer. Before this year, cases were usually only detected in West Africa.
Since May, when it started, about 3,701 cases have been recorded. Similar outbreaks have occurred across Western Europe and the United States.
Cases peaked at over 60 per day in mid-July, but have been declining since then, averaging less than 15 per day in early September.
Experts attribute the decline to the UK’s vaccination strategy.
All contact with monkeypox patients should be isolated for up to 21 days.
The mean age of the patients was 37.8 years and 95% were gay or bisexual men.
The researchers looked at the time it took for the first symptoms to appear in the first patient and the time for symptoms to appear in a known contact.
They also looked at the incubation period, the period from exposure to the virus to the onset of symptoms.
The team found that it took 7.8 days for symptoms to appear after a patient’s first exposure.
But many contacts were infected before symptoms began in the initial case.
Independent experts described the findings as “compelling” and said they were asking “urgent questions”.
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