Dr. Isabel Villegas Mota, head of the Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Unit at the National Institute of Perinatology, indicated that, if good case control is not carried out, monkeypox can get out of proportion, due to the large channels spread that infections now have due to human mobility.
“As a public health emergency it cannot be downplayed. The fact that we have just experienced a pandemic with unprecedented repercussions does not mean that this is less relevant. It is a disease that we did not have in the community and, although there are some populations that have been considered at risk, we are all potentially exposed, ”he stressed.
problems to diagnose
The expert pointed out that it is difficult to diagnose monkeypox because it can be confused with other viral infections. It is also difficult to prove that it caused the death of people, especially in patients with other diseases such as HIV or cancer.
“Now we are seeing it with fewer lesions, with a different presentation, that is, more difficult to diagnose. That is why it has even been considered a matter of practically national security, because it is a biosafety issue to make the diagnosis by sending the samples only to laboratories authorized by the National Institute of Epidemiological Diagnosis and Reference (InDRE)”, he explained. .
For weeks, the Ministry of Health has been analyzing the death of two people positive for monkeypox to confirm if the cause was that disease and, to date, it has not given the result.
“Suddenly it is not so easy, because you have to review all the clinical history of the patients, of those who died and wait if an autopsy is done.”
He explained that monkeypox has a transmission potential of 2.13. “This means that it has the potential for transmission to generate epidemics, and that is what is happening,” she said in an interview.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, this coronavirus had a potential of 1.5 and then mutated and the Omicron variant reached a transmission potential of 8.
“It became as transmissible as measles, which was one of the infections with the highest potential for transmission among the population in the world. Right now we have an R0 of 2.13 (for monkeypox), but this can be changed, as we have already learned”, he warned.
