WHO advises people infected with monkeypox to stay away from animals, especially their pets, following the discovery of the first suspected case of human-to-animal transmission.
“This is the first reported case of transmission from human beings to animals,” the WHO technical manager for monkeypox said on Wednesday, according to AFP quoted by several media. The opportunity for the World Health Organization to call for vigilance from infected people who are in possession of pets.
Reported last week by the scientific journal The Lancet, a case of transmission from man to dog has been reported. It would be two men, carriers of the Monkeypox virus, who would have transmitted it to their greyhound in Paris.
Public health agencies recommend infected people stay away from pets, so the risk of transmission in theory was not unknown to scientists.
Mutation risk
On the other hand, the head of the WHO, Rosamund Lewis, recalled the crucial role of “waste management”, in particular to avoid any risk of transmission by rodents or non-domestic animalsbecause when the virus “moves in a small mammalian population with a high density of animals”, the risk of seeing it mutate is greater.
If this first case of transmission from man to dog can cause concern, in particular because of these risks of mutation, the WHO wants to be reassuring and indicates thatat this stage, there is no evidence that this is the case with monkeypox. On the other hand, vigilance remains essential since “as soon as the virus moves into another environment affecting another population, iThere is obviously a possibility that it develops differently and mutates differently.“, recalled Rosamund Lewis.
