Brief overview of mpox: To worry or to ignore?

Abstract

Mpox was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a zoonotic infectious disease with various possible transmission routes. Currently, it is a reemerging disease being monitored by the World Health Organization (WHO) after a surge of reported cases in several non-endemic countries in May 2022 and August 2023. This study probes into the issue of whether mpox should or should not be concerned as a potential threat during and after the current COVID-19 pandemic. Literature reviews were conducted using PubMed, DOAJ, and Cochrane to understand and synthesize more information on the virulence and lethality of mpox. The keywords used included “monkeypox”, “outbreak”, “reemerging infectious disease”, “southeast asia”, “smallpox”, “sars cov”, and “transmission”, which were all associated with the Boolean operators “AND” and “OR”. A total of 30 articles acquired from various journals and international official websites were included in this study. The sudden outbreaks across the Asia-Pacific region may be attributed to countries lifting their travel restrictions. Studies have shown that mpox has similar transmission routes to COVID-19 and manifests similar symptoms to smallpox. However, mpox needs prolonged contact for its transmission and has a lower case fatality rate (CFR). Several studies highlighted that current outbreaks have different epidemiological and clinical characteristics from classic cases. Mpox is not as highly transmissible as COVID-19 and not as severe as smallpox, but it still poses a potential threat to human health and needs further observation and immediate containment to prevent further transmission worldwide. The preparation of smallpox vaccination in case of emergency and further clinical trials of smallpox drugs are recommended.

Keywords

Mpox / Outbreak / Reemerging infectious disease

Conflict of interest statement

The authors claim there is no conflict of interest.

Funding

This study receives no extramural funding.

Data availability statement

The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Authors’ contributions

Purnamasidhi CAW developed conceptualization and supervised the project as the guarantor. Junior D and Suteja RC both contributed to the definition of intellectual content within the article. Junior D, Purnama GV, Suteja RC, and Adiputra IKH all contributed to the literature search process. Junior D and Purnama GV both prepared and drafted the manuscript. Adiputra IKH, Wulandari PK, and Diksha IGNAS all contributed to the editing of the manuscript. Junior D, Purnama GV, Suteja RC, Wulandari PK, and Diksha IGNAS reviewed the final version of the manuscript and contributed to the administration of the manuscript.

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