As of June 15, a total of 1,882 monkeypox cases have been lab-confirmed from more than 30 countries across the world. With 1,158 confirmed cases from 22 countries, Europe has reported the highest number of cases so far, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The U.S. has reported 83 cases across 19 States as of June 16.
While monkeypox has been endemic in about a dozen countries in Central and West Africa, the virus is not endemic in people. “Nearly all” monkeypox outbreaks in these countries have been due to the virus jumping across the species barrier from animals to humans.
Sustained human-to-human transmission in the endemic countries has been “rare”, Dr. Christian Happi from the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), Redeemer’s University, Nigeria and others write in a report posted in virological.org.
