Q&A on Mpox
Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a Q&A we published in May 2022.
Last summer saw the largest outbreak ever of mpox, the disease formerly known as monkeypox.
Beginning in May 2022, cases of the disease, which is a much less dangerous relative of smallpox, began cropping up in Europe and other places outside of Central and West Africa, where mpox normally occurs sporadically.
People all over the world, primarily gay men and other men who have sex with men, developed painful and infectious lesions characteristic of the disease, and a small number of them died.
By late July 2022, the World Health Organization designated the growing outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. With more than 6,600 American cases, the U.S. also declared mpox a public health emergency in early August.
A year later, the situation has improved. Following a peak of cases in mid-August 2022, and a rapid vaccination campaign in some countries, the outbreak subsided in December. Caseloads fell from more than 1,000 a day worldwide to fewer than 75 a day by the end of the year, and from more than 400 a day in the U.S. to fewer than 10, with further declines since then. Given the relative trickle of cases, the U.S. ended its mpox emergency in January, and the WHO did so in May.
But the outbreak is not over. (Even a single case of confirmed mpox in a country is considered an outbreak.) And with warmer weather and the arrival of Pride month, health officials and other experts are concerned that mpox could be on the rise again. In mid-May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assessed the risk of resurgent mpox outbreaks as “substantial.”
Here, we provide an update on the disease, and explain what makes the outbreak unusual and how people can protect themselves.
