The disease, which is characterized by rashes close to chickenpox, is generally without gravity and has already caused epidemics outside the African continent, where it is endemic in certain countries.
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A new disease has worried international health authorities since the beginning of May: the variole of the monkey (Monkeypox in English). In less than two weeks, seventeen cases were confirmed by PCR over fifty reports, the patients with rashes that can look like chickenpox or syphilis.
Until now, nine cases were confirmed in the United Kingdom , five in Portugal in the Lisbon region, where about fifteen others are still under examination, only one case has been identified to Stockholm, Sweden, as in Italy, and twenty-three suspect cases were reported in the Madrid region, Spain. Outre-tlantique, a Case has also been confirmed in Massachusets with a person often traveling to Canada, where a dozen cases are being examined. No link has yet been established with the reports that have occurred in Europe.
These contamination by the variolate of the monkey outside the African continent, where certain countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Nigeria have regularly the scene of epidemics since the 1970s, are not unpublished, but their dissemination through different countries has something to intrigue. In the United Kingdom, the first case was identified in a person returning from Nigeria. “What is unusual and justifies the particular vigilance of the health authorities is the interhuman transmission at the origin of certain cases, notes Eric d’Ortenzio, doctor and epidemiologist at the National Agency for Research on AIDS and Diseases emerging infectious. Since 2018, several cases have been imported from Nigeria to the United Kingdom, without giving rise to community transmission. “
Two strains
British health authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) are interested in the fact that several cases have been reported “in patients in sexual health services with vesicular eruption disease and homosexuals, Bisexuals and other men having sex with men “, according to the WHO press release . Studies have shown that the interhuman transmission of the variole of the monkey, generally limited, is possible via the droplets emitted by speaking and spitting, but also by direct contact with liquids suining rashes or indirectly by contact with infected objects. On the other hand, sexual transmission is still very little documented, even if it is made possible by the vesicles also developing on the mucous membranes.
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