"The countries that are reporting monkeypox now are countries that do not normally have outbreaks of monkeypox," Rosamund Lewis, head of the smallpox secretariat, WHO Emergencies programme, said Tuesday during a news briefing at the United Nations in Geneva.
"This is an emerging disease. It has been emerging for the last 20 to 30 years, (so) it's not unknown, it's very well described," Lewis told reporters. "The risk for the general public, therefore, appears to be low, because we know that the main modes of transmission have been as described in the past."
Cases in other parts of the world than Africa are typically linked to international travel or imported animals infected with the pox, the CDC said.
Several cases of monkeypox reported in the UK have been among people who had
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