Tuesday 24 May 2022 03:52 AM Nick Coatsworth explains why Australians DON'T need to worry about a monkeypox ... trends now
Monkeypox is nothing to worry about and outbreaks will be in the hundreds rather than thousands of cases unlike Covid, a top doctor says.
Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth said monkeypox was not a novel virus, meaning newly-discovered, and there is already an effective vaccine.
The World Health Organisation has confirmed 92 cases and 28 suspected cases of monkeypox in non-African countries, where it is endemic - meaning widespread - in some nations, including two in Australia.
Monkeypox symptoms include, fever, body aches, chills, fatigue and after one to three days infected people may also develop a rash and fluid-filled lesions (pictured)
But Dr Coatsworth said there was no cause for panic and the outbreak wouldn't blow up into a pandemic, which is when an epidemic occurs worldwide.
'We know about monkeypox, it's been endemic in West Africa and the Congo region of Africa,' Mr Coatsworth told the Today show on Tuesday.
'We know a couple of things: we know that the largest outbreaks in the past decades have been in the hundreds - not the thousands.
'It's not, in my view, going to move towards the same sort of whole nation epidemic that we saw with Covid-19.'
It is also far less contagious, and also has no evidence of long-term effects, unlike Covid which has been shown to affect 1 in 3 people far beyond their initial infection and even cause permanent damage to cells and organs.
Health officials were urged to keep a close watch for more cases at an emergency meeting convened by the WHO on Saturday, as the disease appeared to be spreading among people who had not traveled to Africa.
However, health officials also stressed the rise in cases did not look like the start of another pandemic as the virus needs close contact to spread.
The WHO identified the cases as belonging to the West African clade of monkeypox, which is relatively mild, compared to the more severe Congo Basin strain, which has a mortality rate of up to 10 per cent of cases.
Infectious Disease Physician Nick Coatsworth (pictured) told the Today Show on Tuesday that monkeypox is not a new virus and is unlikely to cause a national epidemic
Symptoms include fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. After one to three days, some people may also develop a 'chickenpox-like' rash and fluid-filled lesions on the face, arms and legs.
Mr Coatsworth said although monkeypox was a hard disease to transmit, health officials should still 'treat it with
