When Kyle Planck got monkeypox, he was in the worst pain of his life. "I was at a seven or eight [out of 10] of the worst pain I could ever imagine, and it came and went throughout the day," he says, "especially because it was an internal sort of pain – it was very hard to deal with."
In early July, the infectious diseases graduate student in New York City had pustules in different stages on his body. He spent several days bedridden. Then Planck got access to tecovirimat – brand name TPOXX – a two-week course of antiviral pills. Within two days of taking them, he noticed improvements: "Some of the pustules were actually shrinking in size, and some of them just disappeared back into my skin. They didn't go through the normal progression that the lesions usually do," he says.
