New Delhi, Sep 7 (IANS) Amid the global monkeypox outbreak, a report by the US CDC has revealed that unlike Covid-19, the monkeypox virus (MPXV) does not spread easily through the air.
The CDC’s latest ‘Morbidity and Mortality’ weekly report included a study on 113 individuals with MPOX who traveled on 221 flights during 2021-22.
The results showed that none of the 1,046 passengers were infected. “After tracking of the 1,046 passenger contacts by U.S. public health agencies, the CDC identified no additional cases,” the report said.
The findings suggest that “travelling by air with a person infected with ampox does not pose a risk of infection, or require routine contact tracing activities.”
However, the CDC recommends that people with an AmPox infection should remain isolated and delay travel until the infectious person is isolated.
Meanwhile, the CDC also pointed out that regardless of the variant, the findings apply to MPXV and that both clade I and clade II MPox spread in the same ways.
It is spread primarily through close physical or intimate contact with people infected with ampox lesions and “less often through infectious respiratory secretions and fomites,” the CDC said.
This is because the current outbreak is primarily caused by clade 1b, which has historically been associated with increased infectivity.
Ampox, declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO), is currently spreading rapidly in Africa and infecting both adults and children. It is also causing deaths, particularly in children, raising concerns about it being airborne.
“However, the situation is different during close contact, where respiratory droplets may still play a role,” Dr Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the Indian Medical Association’s national Covid-19 task force, said in a post on social media.
Outside Africa, clade 1B of ampox has also spread to Sweden and Thailand, where one case has been reported so far.
–IANS
AKS/GKT
