The virologist of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) Margarita del Val has described monkeypox as a “reasonably benign and very annoying” disease that causes “very large and striking lesions” on the skin. However, she has clarified that the origin of the transmission is really from rodents.
This was explained after participating in a round table at the 1st International Summit on Pandemic Management held in Valencia, where he clarified that “for quite some time there have been infrequent cases among people who had rats as pets.”
However, Del Val has pointed out that “now it seems that it can be transmitted sexually, which is more difficult to detect.” Given this situation, in which Spain is investigating eight suspected cases of this zoonotic infection, he stressed the importance of “locating the origin to stop transmission as soon as possible.”
[How monkeypox spreads to humans and what its symptoms are]
He also explained that monkey pox, despite the name, is a disease transmitted by rodents. To the question of whether the population should worry about the appearance of more cases, the virologist stated that against smallpox “we create a very powerful immunity.”
In this regard, he pointed out that the lesions it causes “are local and heal on their own” and that at the moment there are no serious cases of this disease detected in other countries in recent years. In fact, the United Kingdom and Portugal have already confirmed the first infections of this disease, which Fernando Simón has stressed that although it is “unlikely, we cannot rule out that there is a significant transmission.”
On the other hand, regarding a possible link between childhood hepatitis of unknown origin and Covid-19, he has indicated that the first thing is to “determine if it has any relationship with an infectious transmission mechanism.” “As long as the cases are not linked, I don’t know,” she pointed out. Thus, he has commented that “there can be many more causes for a disease that causes hepatitis.”
2
