And then finally, the pox crust over and people recover. After several days, a rash appears that looks like chickenpox or smallpox, and that progresses over the course of a week or two. It starts with a flu-like illness, fever, feeling bad, but also pronounced swelling of the lymph nodes, and thatвЂ™s different from smallpox. And that is the strain that seems to be causing the current outbreak. There are two strains: one in the Congo Basin, which tends to be more severe, and another in West Africa, which is less severe. In most cases, it causes relatively mild illness, meaning most people donвЂ™t end up in the hospital with it. The symptoms, although somewhat less severe, are quite similar to smallpox. WeвЂ™ve been aware of monkeypox for decades, and we have been interested in it mostly because itвЂ™s a cousin of smallpox. ItвЂ™s called monkeypox because it was first isolated from a monkey in Africa, but the reservoir for it is in rodents, specifically rodents in Central and West Africa. Well, first of all, monkeypox does not come from monkeys. What is monkeypox? What do we need to know? In this Q&A, adapted from a bonus episode of Public Health On Call, Lindsay Smith Rogers talks with Eric Toner, MD, an expert in bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, about what monkeypox is, how it spreads, and why these outbreaks are important to know about but should not be a cause for alarm.

Now, researchers are trying to learn more about how and why the virus is spreading.

But when cases started appearing beyond the expected places-and among people who didnвЂ™t travel to those endemic regions-researchers paid attention. Monkeypox is nothing new, and the virus is endemic in several countries.

Corona tracker johns hopkins