Interview: British expert rules out new pandemic as monkeypox spreads to more countries

LONDON, May 23 (Xinhua) -- As cases of the Monkeypox virus have been reported Sunday in more non-endemic countries, a British virologist said it wouldn't become a COVID-like pandemic.

"Monkeypox is not a COVID situation and it will never be a COVID situation. It will be a problem, but it will be a problem that we will ultimately manage to control. I'm quite convinced," said Paul Hunter, a specialist in medical microbiology and communicable disease control.

"Ultimately, it's something we will be able to control before it becomes a really big issue. The reason for that is we have already have a pretty effective vaccine, the same vaccine we use with smallpox. And the really useful thing with this vaccine is that you can give it to somebody after they've been in contact with a case," Hunter told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

"So the way you would control this is identifying every case that you can as quickly as you can and then vaccinating all their closed contacts. The technical term is ring vaccination for this. You vaccinate a ring around the case and hopefully then stop that spreading further," he added.

More than 120 cases of the virus, a close relative of smallpox, have now been reported in a disease normally confined to parts of Africa. With Israel, Switzerland and Austria among the latest countries to confirm Monkeypox cases, at least 15 countries have reported the outbreaks.

The UK Health Security Agency has reported on Monday 36 additional cases of monkeypox in England, bring the total number of monkeypox cases confirmed in England since May 7 to 56.

Besides Britain and mainland Europe, there have been cases in the United States, Canada and Australia.

Hunter said many, but not all of the cases, have been reported to be in men who have sex with men. "So, it's quite plausible that it's spreading now amongst sexually active networks in a way that typically in Africa, you wouldn't see."

This is probably "an infection that is spreading primarily amongst sexual networks of close contacts, but not exclusively so. And you do get some infection spreading from outside. So we're not at the moment sure how it's going to behave, so I think we have to be very cautious," he said.

Monkeypox is also potentially more severe in children who contact the virus, said Hunter, also a professor of medicine with the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia.

"There is an issue with monkeypox in children. In African cases we do see more severe disease in children than we do in adults," Hunter said.

Hunter said more cases were likely to be reported in Britain and elsewhere in the coming weeks.

"But I think the UK Health Security Agency is right when it says this isn't generally a disease that spreads very easily, and so it probably wouldn't be come much of a risk to the general population. But certainly, with some parts of the population appearing to be more at risk there will be a need for appropriate advice and management when they've been into contact with cases," Hunter said.

At the moment, Hunter said, there are still a lot of scientists who "don't know about how this virus is spreading, and what networks it's spreading through, and how people are being infected and from whom, because it almost certainly will be passed from somebody else."

"I'm pretty sure people will be doing a lot more of the genetics on this, but I think most of us are going to be having to do quite a bit of background reading over the next few days to make sure we know what's been going on. The last two years, we've been reading pretty much only coronavirus stuff," he said.

"Undoubtedly there is a lot of nervousness around at the moment about viral infections amongst the general public, and much of that nervousness is well placed. I think we have to consider each new infection that we're exposed to on what we know about that infection," the expert said.

"The information and knowledge we acquired with COVID doesn't necessarily apply to monkeypox, and it is a very different infection to COVID that isn't going to cause anywhere near the same sorts of levels of harm that COVID has to people's, public health and indeed to society."