With a mortality rate of around 30%, human smallpox has long been considered among the worst scourges of humanity, killing between 300 and 500 million people, according to latest scientific estimates. This is a very different finding from monkeypox, which generally heals spontaneously. Since its recent release in Europe, no deaths have been recorded in the region, even if there are serious cases of the disease.
The latter occur more frequently in children and are related to the extent of exposure to the virus, the patient’s state of health or the severity of the complications. The few deaths are, themselves, “especially linked to late management or bacterial superinfections”, explains, to AFP, the head of the virology department at the National Institute for Biomedical Research. Since the beginning of the year, at least 73 people infected with monkeypox have died, all in Africa, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
