London, UK: Monkeypox patients can spread the virus up to four days before symptoms manifest, with more than half of transmissions possibly occurring during this time, a UK study claims.
The study observed that although the results have not been validated, they show that many cases of monkeypox infections cannot be avoided by instructing patients to isolate once they become aware that they are infected.
The virus unexpectedly began spreading outside of West African nations in May where it has long been spreading. Monkeypox has caused the deaths of 36 people out of more than 77,000 cases. But the number of cases has progressively decreased since they peaked in July, especially in Europe and North America, which were the regions most severely affected in the initial stages of the global outbreak.
The current study was conducted in Britain, the first country to notice a cluster of cases outside of Africa in May, and it was published in the journal BMJ. Among 2,746 individuals who tested positive for monkeypox in the nation from May to August, researchers from the UK Health Security Agency examined contract tracking information and questionnaires.
Men who have intercourse with other men made up about 95 percent of the participants, a group that has been severely impacted by the epidemic worldwide. The researchers discovered that it required an average of roughly eight days for symptoms to manifest after a patient was exposed, after analyzing the data using two distinct statistical models.
This delay was typically longer than the serial interval, or the time between the onset of symptoms in the first patient and the contact case.
“The median serial interval was estimated to be shorter than the incubation period, which indicates considerably greater pre-symptomatic transmission than previously thought,” the study mentioned.
According to the study, 53 percent of cases were spread before a person displayed any symptoms of monkeypox. A maximum of four days might have passed between transmission and the onset of symptoms, it claimed.
Fever, aches in the muscles, and huge, boil-like skin lesions are some of the signs of monkeypox. The “robust analysis” was “interesting and persuasive,” according to Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, a virus expert at Emory University in the United States who was not part of the research.
This needs confirmation by more studies but has implications for vaccination-based disease elimination strategies which should be seriously considered.
Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, shared.