As of 8 August, there are 2,914 confirmed and 103 highly probable monkeypox cases in the UK: 3,017 in total. Of these, 2,883 are in England. Many of the symptoms of the illness appear initially similar to chickenpox but there are several key differences between the two.
First, the diseases are caused by different viruses: monkeypox is an orthopoxvirus while chickenpox is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which also causes shingles.
