Should infected people always be treated in hospital, even if the course is mild?
That is still under discussion. Theoretically, you might also isolate mild courses at home, but of course there is a risk of transmission within the family, just as we know from Covid-19. What I know so far is that such further infections in families have not yet been observed in previous cases in Europe, but most of the patients have also been in hospital treatment so far. What we know from the European cases so far is that most of them have been mild – I’m almost surprised how mild they are. Fortunately, the virus genomes that have been sequenced so far are the West African variant of the monkeypox virus, which is much less likely to be fatal than the Central African variant. In the West African variant, around one percent of the known diseases are fatal, in the Central African ten percent.
Could it be less than 1 percent in Europe because of better treatment options?
This is now often said, and to some extent it may be true, but I wouldn’t overstate the treatment differences. For a large part of the management of the disease, such as treating symptoms such as fever or headaches, sore throats and coughs, there is not much difference between Europe and Africa. These therapies can also be carried out very well here in Africa, if at all necessary. There are certainly differences in the extent of intensive care treatment – but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
How good are the treatment options anyway?
In most cases, the condition will go away on its own within a few days to three weeks. The antiviral drug Tecovirimat has been approved as a specific therapy once morest virus multiplication since January of this year. But due to the few cases of effectiveness, there are no studies in humans, only preclinical data from animal studies. In this respect, one cannot really say how high the effectiveness actually is. For example, with the drug remdesivir, which was developed once morest Ebola, we have found that it is 100 percent effective in monkeys infected with Ebola viruses. In humans, on the other hand, the effectiveness once morest Ebola is zero percent, and even once morest Covid-19 the effectiveness is only very low, if at all.
