According to a scientific study published in the “British Medical Journal”, a person infected with monkeypox becomes contagious very quickly.
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L’The monkeypox epidemic, which continues to progress almost silently, still poses many problems for scientists, who are struggling to determine with certainty when an infected person becomes contagious. A recent scientific study has provided some answers. The monkeypox virus is often transmitted before the first symptoms appear, suggests a study published on Wednesday, November 2, results which have yet to be confirmed, but could play an important role in the management of the epidemic.
The “pre-symptomatic transmission” of monkeypox, whose symptoms are mainly characterized by rashes, appears “considerable”, according to the authors of this study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
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This work was carried out in the United Kingdom, one of the first countries where the current epidemic spread. This caused, from the spring, the appearance of many cases of monkey pox in Europe and on the American continent, whereas the disease was hitherto mainly present in several African countries.
If the epidemic, which has struck nearly 80,000 patients and caused around thirty deaths, currently seems to be abating, the health authorities remain vigilant. As such, it is important to know the risk of “silent” transmission, that is to say during the incubation period before the patient is struck by the first symptoms.
What incubation time?
The study authors, led by epidemiologist Thomas Ward, attempted to answer this question by examining data from almost 3,000 British patients. As with the current epidemic as a whole, these are mostly men who have had same-sex relationships.
This review allowed to get an idea of two types of delays and to compare them. The first is the incubation time, during which the patient carries the virus without knowing it. The second is the time that elapses from the onset of symptoms in a given patient, until their appearance in the one to whom he transmitted the disease.
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The researchers concluded that this second delay tends to be shorter than the first, which suggests transmission before the first symptoms. They estimate that this presymptomatic transmission represents more than half of the cases, and can occur up to four days before the symptoms.
However, these results still need to be confirmed by other studies, say other researchers in a commentary also published by the BMJ. At present and even with this work, presymptomatic transmission “is not irrefutable”, they warn. However, they believe that the study marks an important step in this direction, due to the large sample of patients and the seriousness of the statistical models used.