Officials around the world are keeping watch for more cases because, for the first time, the rare disease appears to be spreading among people who didn’t travel to Africa, where monkeypox is endemic. They stress, however, that the risk to the general population is low.
WHAT IS MONKEYPOX?
Monkeypox is a virus that originates in wild animals like rodents and primates, and occasionally jumps to people. It belongs to the same virus family as smallpox.Most human cases have been in central and west Africa and outbreaks have been relatively limited.
The illness was first identified by scientists in 1958 when there were two outbreaks of a “pox-like” disease in research monkeys — thus the name monkeypox. The first known human infection was in 1970, in a young boy in a remote part of Congo.