People with monkeypox should avoid contact with animals, including pets.
People infected with monkeypox may have passed the virus to their pet dog, scientists recently reported.
"This is the first incident that we're learning about where there is human-to-animal transmission," Rosamund Lewis, the World Health Organization's lead on monkeypox, told The Washington Post on Monday ."So, on a number of levels, this is new information. It's not surprising information, and it's something that we've been on the watch out for."
Since the start of the monkeypox outbreak, cases of infection have been heavily concentrated among men who have sex with men, but this trend doesn't indicate that the virus exclusively spreads through sexual activity or that men who have sex with men are particuarly prone to the disease — they are not. Anyone, regardless of sexual orientiation or behavior, can catch and spread the virus.
Twelve days after the two men contracted monkeypox, their 4-year-old Italian greyhound developed multiple lesions on its skin and mucous membranes, including large, pus-filled pimples on its abdomen and an ulceration on its anus. The dog then tested positive for monkeypox on a diagnostic test and a genetic analysis revealed that the virus that infected one of the men exactly matched the virus that infected the greyhound.