What you should know about monkeypox: how is it spread?
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(CNN) --
The World Health Organization has already counted more than 550 cases of monkeypox worldwide, the group's technical lead for monkeypox, Rosamund Lewis, said on CNN International on Tuesday.
"We currently have a count of more than 550 confirmed cases in 30 countries in four of the six WHO regions," Lewis said.
What is the difference between monkeypox and normal smallpox?
Are they just as deadly?
"What we're seeing now is quite different," he said, given that the outbreak is happening in multiple places at once.
"We're seeing cases all appearing in a relatively short period of time. We're seeing that in a few days, in a couple of weeks, we're seeing over 500 cases. This is different. This hasn't been seen before."
In an update over the weekend, the WHO said that as of Thursday it had received reports of 257 confirmed cases of monkeypox and about 120 suspected cases in 23 countries where the virus is not endemic.
Lewis said the WHO does not know the origin of the outbreak and called on countries to take advantage of the "window of opportunity" to prevent cases from escalating into a larger outbreak.
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"Moderate risk" for monkeypox, says WHO
The group said at its weekend briefing that the level of global public health risk is moderate, "considering this is the first time that monkeypox cases and clusters have been reported simultaneously in widely disparate geographic areas of WHO, and with no known epidemiological links to non-endemic countries in West or Central Africa.
However, he added: "The risk to public health could increase if this virus seizes the opportunity to establish itself as a human pathogen and spread to groups at higher risk of severe disease, such as young children and immunocompromised people."
The WHO urges health care providers to be on the lookout for possible symptoms such as rash, fever, swollen lymph nodes, headache, back pain, muscle aches and fatigue, and to offer testing to anyone who has these symptoms.
During a news conference Monday, Lewis said "we're not worried about a global pandemic" of monkeypox at this time.
The virus is not new, he noted on CNNI, but the WHO is meeting this week to set a research agenda and research priorities for the virus.
"It's been there before, and we have a knowledge base that we can build on, but there are still a lot of questions," he said.
monkey pox
