The monkeypox virus strain that has emerged across the world in recent weeks may be evolving at an abnormally fast rate – making it more infectious than previous versions of the virus.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that the virus has replicated up to 12 times its expected pace since 2018.
This means that the virus, which is generally believed to spread by physical touch, contaminated surfaces or very close bodily contact could be able to spread in ways atypical to the tropical viruses normal patterns.
It would explain the recent global monkeypox update, where 201 cases have been detected across 25 U.S. states and Washington D.C., with over 3,500 cases detected worldwide in countries where the virus is not endemic.
Researchers, whose findings are pending official publishing in nature, collected and studied 15 samples of the monkeypox virus for the study.
The NIH team restructured the viruses genetic information to find the number of changes the virus had undergone since this strain began its circulation.
While the virus was detected recently in human populations, experts believe this strain of West African monkeypox first began its movement through the world in 2018.
How viruses mutate and circulate is a generally known science. DNA viruses like monkeypox generally do not rapidly mutate – like COVID-19 does.
