When the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency for the second time in just two years, many asked: Is this the new COVID-19? Scientists and health experts agree that’s a valid question, but they say the answer is no.
mpox is not the new Covid. The disease poses a low risk to the public, said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO's regional director for Europe. “We know how to control smallpox. In the European region, we know what steps are needed to break the chain of transmission,” he added.
Both diseases are caused by viruses, but they produce different symptoms and spread in different ways. “The differences are more pronounced than the similarities,” said Professor Rodney Adam, an infectious diseases expert at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Kenya.
1. mpox is not a new virus
mpox has been around since 1958. At that time, the virus was discovered in captive monkeys in Denmark, the BBC reported. The first human case of the disease was reported in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since then, outbreaks have spread across West and Central Africa. A global health emergency was first declared in 2022, when the disease spread to more than 70 countries.
In contrast, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, was a new virus discovered in Wuhan, China, in 2019 and quickly became a global pandemic. Scientists say we know more about smallpox than we did about COVID-19 when it was an international public health emergency.
2. Smallpox is not as contagious as COVID-19.
Although both diseases spread through close contact, COVID-19 spreads more quickly. People can easily catch COVID, as the virus is spread through the air by coughing, sneezing, talking, singing, or just breathing.
On the other hand, smallpox spreads through close or prolonged contact, such as physical contact, including sexual contact, use of contaminated bedding and clothing, and prolonged personal interaction.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 760 million COVID-19 cases were recorded worldwide between 2019 and August 2023, while it took two years for the number of smallpox cases to reach the 100,000 mark globally as of May 2022.
3. Vaccines are now available against smallpox.
When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, there was a race to develop vaccines, as there had been no vaccine for the disease before. However, vaccines are already available for monkeypox, a related disease that was eradicated from the world in 1980 through vaccination. Smallpox vaccines also provide effective protection against smallpox and have proven effective during the 2022 outbreak.
“It doesn’t provide 100% protection, but based on the large outbreak in Europe and North America in 2022, older people are less at risk, because they have some protection against smallpox,” said Professor Rodney Adam.
But they have already developed vaccines specifically against monkeypox. Bavaria Nordic delivered more than 15 million doses of the vaccine, which is a smallpox vaccine based on the smallpox vaccine, to more than 76 countries during the outbreak in 2022. So this vaccine uses an existing technology that has been shown to prevent infection.
Overall, while the development of new vaccines has been necessary for COVID-19, effective vaccines are already available for smallpox, which could be used to respond more quickly to outbreaks and limit their spread.
4. The mucovirus mutates more slowly than coronaviruses.
Viruses change over time, but some viruses change faster than others. This is because MOX is caused by a DNA virus, while COVID-19 is caused by an RNA virus. The American Society for Microbiology has found that DNA viruses are less likely to change than RNA viruses.
There are two known families (or clades) of smallpox: clade 1 and clade 2. In contrast, SARS-CoV-2 has more than 20 known clades. The current smallpox epidemic is primarily driven by a variant of clade 1, clade 1b.
For subtype 1b, it has been observed that it is most often transmitted through sexual contact, but it can also be transmitted from person to person in households, said Trudie Lang, professor of global health research at the University of Oxford.
According to the World Health Organization, it is not yet certain that strain 1b spreads more easily than other strains. What they do know is that in the recent outbreak, people tend to have severe symptoms by the time they realize they are infected.
5. Lockdowns and border closures are less likely.
Many fear that the spread of smallpox could lead to border closures and lockdowns, as we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, despite the disease spreading to 16 African countries in the past two years, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) does not recommend border closures.
“Africa CDC does not currently recommend restrictions on the movement of people or goods based on the evidence we have,” said Dr Jean Cassia, the agency’s director-general. “Movements of people and goods can continue as normal while we have the means to combat the pandemic.”
Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, agreed. “Smallpox is a virus that can be controlled if we take the right actions at the right time and work together to solve it,” he said.
Cover image is an illustration. Cover image source: Getty Images
