Europe director warned that as summer
Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2025 4:35 am
The U.N. agency said the outbreak is "a highly unusual event" and said the fact that cases are being seen in so many different countries suggests the disease may have been silently spreading for some time. The agency's begins across the continent, mass gatherings, festivals and parties could accelerate the spread of monkeypox.
Other scientists have pointed out that it will be difficult to disentangle whether it is sex itself or the close contact related to sex that has driven the recent spread of monkeypox across Europe.
"By nature, sexual activity involves intimate contact, which one would buy phone number list expect to increase the likelihood of transmission, whatever a person's sexual orientation and irrespective of the mode of transmission," said Mike Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London.
On Sunday, the chief medical adviser of Britain's Health Security Agency, Dr. Susan Hopkins, said she expected more monkeypox cases to be identified in the country "on a daily basis."
U.K. officials have said "a notable proportion" of the cases in Britain and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa and who are gay, bisexual or have sex with men. Authorities in Portugal and Spain also said their cases were in men who mostly had sex with other men and whose infections were picked up when they sought help for lesions at sexual health clinics.
Heymann, who is also a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the monkeypox outbreak was likely a random event that might be traceable to a single infection.
"It's very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions on the genitals, hands or somewhere else, and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact," Heymann hypothesized.
Other scientists have pointed out that it will be difficult to disentangle whether it is sex itself or the close contact related to sex that has driven the recent spread of monkeypox across Europe.
"By nature, sexual activity involves intimate contact, which one would buy phone number list expect to increase the likelihood of transmission, whatever a person's sexual orientation and irrespective of the mode of transmission," said Mike Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London.
On Sunday, the chief medical adviser of Britain's Health Security Agency, Dr. Susan Hopkins, said she expected more monkeypox cases to be identified in the country "on a daily basis."
U.K. officials have said "a notable proportion" of the cases in Britain and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa and who are gay, bisexual or have sex with men. Authorities in Portugal and Spain also said their cases were in men who mostly had sex with other men and whose infections were picked up when they sought help for lesions at sexual health clinics.
Heymann, who is also a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the monkeypox outbreak was likely a random event that might be traceable to a single infection.
"It's very possible there was somebody who got infected, developed lesions on the genitals, hands or somewhere else, and then spread it to others when there was sexual or close, physical contact," Heymann hypothesized.