Current Monkeypox Virus May Be Showing Accelerated Evolution as More New Cases Rise - The Daily Beast

A new genetic analysis reveals the current outbreak may have begun earlier than thought—and the rise in cases is only fueling opportunities for new mutations.

The monkeypox outbreak that health authorities first noticed in Europe back in May is getting worse.

While health officials have all the tools they need to contain it—primarily contact-tracing and vaccines—right now the virus is moving faster than we are, and adapting.

The current strain of monkeypox may have been circulating, undetected, months before we finally diagnosed the first case outside Africa.

Officials first noticed the current outbreak, also of the West African strain, after diagnosing a U.K.

Hitching a ride to Europe, the virus spread quickly through physical contact.

Isidro and her team sequenced 15 samples taken from current pox patients and concluded that, no, there’s just one big outbreak.

According to Isidro and company, the virus may have been circulating outside of endemic countries long before officials finally noticed the infections and sounded the alarm.

The virus potentially traveled beyond Africa in animals such as pet rodents, and spread from animal to animal before finally jumping to a human host and triggering the current outbreak some time prior to May, the geneticists wrote.

In other words, someone—or several someones—touched an infected person in Africa, then flew home to Europe or the U.S., and spread the virus to other people through direct contact.

“More than one introduction” means multiple travelers picked up the same pox strain and spread it beyond Africa around the same time.

In any event, undetected or overlapping transmission vectors are alarming—and not just because they could mean faster viral spread to more places before authorities finally, hopefully, contain an outbreak.

Isidro’s team found 50 single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, in the monkeypox strain behind the current outbreak.

It’s possible the current outbreak just achieved a kind of genetic critical mass before we had a chance to intervene.

Maybe this strain of the virus got lucky and more than one traveler helped spread it outside Africa nearly simultaneously.