WHO Director-General cautioned that the window to contain the global monkeypox outbreak may be narrowing.
In the current outbreak, the primary driver of transmission seems to be skin-to-skin contact between people, often involving exposure to infected people’s rashes or lesions.
Second, disease experts worry that the U.S. isn’t processing tests quickly enough to identify new cases in a timely manner. “The reason this is endemic in Africa is there’s animal reservoirs,” he added. “The virus is propagating and spreading among animals, and then it jumps into humans or nonhuman primates every now and then.”In the past, Roess said, countries outside Africa quickly halted monkeypox outbreaks through testing and contact tracing, but the current outbreak is unprecedentedly large and widespread.