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What does the future look like for monkeypox?

With cases declining in the United States and Europe, Nature examines scenarios of how the outbreak might play out.
  1. Sara Reardon

    1. Sara Reardon is a freelance journalist based in Bozeman, Montana.

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People walk past a sign reading "Monkeypox is here" attached to railings at a street event in Toronto

A public-health sign about monkeypox in Toronto, Canada. Credit: Steve Russell/Toronto Star/Getty

On 29 April, a person in Nigeria developed an unusual rash and then travelled to the United Kingdom —carrying monkeypox with them. Since then, the virus has reached more than 70,000 people in over 100 countries. That has surprised health-care specialists around the world, because the sustained spread doesn’t resemble the sporadic pattern of previous monkeypox outbreaks in people, caused by a virus that lives in animals in Africa.

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Nature 610, 250-252 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03204-7

References

  1. Delaney, K. P. et al. MMWR Morb. Mortal. Wkly Rep. 71, 1126–1130 (2022).

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  2. Zaeck, L. M. et al. Preprint at medRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.31.22279414 (2022).

  3. Isidro, J. et al. Nature Med. 28, 1569–1572 (2022).

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