Monkeypox may have been circulating in UK for years, scientists say

Public health officials in England have confirmed seven more cases of monkeypox, bringing the UK total to 78.

More than 200 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in at least 20 countries in the past month, with dozens more under investigation.

It is the first time that the disease has spread in the community outside Africa, with all previous cases associated with travel to regions where the virus is endemic or imported animals harbouring the virus.

In the UK, health protection teams are isolating people who test positive and offering vaccinations against monkeypox, which are cross-protective against the disease. Men who have sex with men are more likely to have cases.

Scientists are trying to understand how the disease came to flare up in so many countries in such a short period of time. It is thought that monkeypox was undetected in the UK or Europe for several years before it reached the MSM community.

Prof David Heymann, who chairs a World Health Organization expert group on infectious threats to global health, said it was possible the virus entered the UK two or three years ago.

There were four confirmed cases of monkeypox in the UK in the last year. Three more cases with similar travel history arrived in 2021.

Heymann said that it could be that the virus transmission amplified from this low level of transmission when it entered the population. He said it was one of many hypotheses that needed further study before conclusions could be drawn.

The monkeypox viruses that were taken from people in the ongoing outbreak show a close resemblance to the one that arrived in the UK, Israel and Singapore from Africa. They may have arisen as a result of the virus circulating at low levels.

The UK's first official case of 2022, which came from Nigeria on 4 May, was already in the country.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) released images of monkeypox on May 14th, and doctors in sexual health clinics realized some of their patients could have the disease. The patients had tested negative for common infections and doctors suspected a condition called disseminated gonococcal infection, before the patients tested positive for monkeypox.

The professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium said that this may be a virus that has been circulating undetected for a long time.

Scientists don't know if the virus has evolved while infecting humans or if it makes it more transmissible in humans.

There has been a chain of transmission events that went undetected because chronic infections are not a plausible scenario.

People had less contact with health services during the Covid Pandemic. It's entirely possible that the outbreak wouldn't have come to light if sexual health clinics hadn't been aware of the first UK case.

More studies are needed to understand what is happening, according to Prof Oyewale Tomori, an adviser to the Nigerian government.

He said that it may have been spreading silently until we had this flare-up following some changes in behavior.

Between the year of 2020 and the year of 2019, you won't think of monkeypox if you see a rash in any part of Europe.

If the system misses one case, then it's an opportunity for it to spread from one person to another. I think the amplification came when you have a lot of people together.