23 May 2022,
It’s a familiar story. Close contacts of individuals infected by a dangerous illness are being asked by UK officials to isolate as government concern about the outbreak grows. Just 57 cases have been reported in Britain so far – 168 globally – but already questions are being asked about the virus’s origins. One theory involves the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The lab, which is considered by a growing number of scientists to be the origin of the original Covid pandemic, specialises in so-called ‘gain of function experiments’. These experiments aim to genetically enhance viruses (like Covid) so they are more likely to jump species to humans. Reports emerged last year that researchers at the lab fell ill before the first cases of Covid-19 were recorded.
Now, a February study (submitted last August) has come to light suggesting similar experiments may have been carried out in Wuhan on a monkeypox virus. The paper, ‘Efficient assembly of a large fragment of monkeypox virus genome as a PCR template using dual-selection based transformation-associated recombination’, was published in the journal Virologica Sinica (the Wuhan lab’s own journal). It looked to create a monkeypox virus that could be identified on PCR tests. The researchers successfully produced a ‘genomic fragment of monkeypox virus’. The paper identified the potential risks of such research:
“This DNA assembly tool applied in virological research could also raise potential security concerns, especially when the assembled product contains a full set of genetic material that can be recovered into a contagious pathogen.
So could it have leaked? The researchers say that this would be impossible because the monkeypox DNA fragment they produced was so small – ‘less than one-third [...] of the genome’. So the experiment was: ‘fail-safe by virtually eliminating any risk of recovering into an infectious virus.’
So it’s very unlikely that any experiment on monkeypox in the Wuhan lab would have leaked. But the discovery of these experiments raises alarm given the experience of Covid. Emails uncovered between the Wellcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar and America’s Antony Fauci suggested that the lab ‘accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans.’ In the same emails, the former director of the US National Institutes for Health warned publication could damage ‘international harmony.’ Without more transparency within the scientific community, particularly in China, any outbreak or any virus will immediately lead to more and more suspicion.
WRITTEN BY
Michael Simmons is a data journalist at The Spectator
Monkeypox outbreak ‘is containable’ says
World Health Organization
AMELIA HANSFORD MAY 24, 2022
The stages of monkeypox. (UK Health Security Agency)
The emerging monkeypox outbreak is a “containable situation” in “non-endemic countries”, according to experts at the World Health Organization (WHO).
The virus, which has seen more than 100 cases in Europe, the Americas, and Australia, is expected to spread further, but the overall risk to the wider population is low, WHO experts said on Monday. (23 May).
The virus is most common in remote parts of Central and West Africa and hasn’t seen an outbreak this significant outside the region in 50 years.
However, WHO’s emerging diseases lead Maria Van Kerkhove stressed that “this is a containable situation”.
“We want to stop human-to-human transmission,” Kerkhove said. “We can do this in the non-endemic countries.”
A big reason monkeypox is containable is its low transmissibility, as Kerkhove explained: “Transmission is really happening from skin-to-skin contact, most of the people who have been identified have had more of a mild disease.”
It also “tends not to mutate and [tends] to be fairly stable,” noted WHO’s smallpox secretariat lead Rosamund Lewis. There’s no current supporting evidence to suggest the spreading virus is a mutation.
According to the BBC, Andrea Ammon of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control noted the “likelihood of spread is very low”, but is higher through close contact during sex.
“The likelihood of further spread of the virus through close contact, for example during sexual activities amongst persons with multiple sexual partners, is considered to be high,” Ammon said.
UK officials have confirmed that cases in the country have predominantly been found among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, though a sexual health expert told PinkNews that it’s unclear whether this is because of queer men attending more regular sexual health screenings.
Symptoms of monkeypox include fever, headaches, swellings, aching muscles, and exhaustion. Rashes and lesions may start to appear on the face, hands, and feet.
Monkeypox is not currently considered a sexually transmitted infection, but can still be transmitted through sex. Residents in the UK who have come into contact with a confirmed case are now being asked to isolate themselves for 21 days.
The UN has previously condemned reporting on the virus as “racist and homophobic,” with UNAIDs deputy executive director Matthew Kavanagh telling The Guardian: “Stigma and blame undermine trust and capacity to respond effectively during outbreaks like this one.”
The stages of monkeypox. (UK Health Security Agency)
The emerging monkeypox outbreak is a “containable situation” in “non-endemic countries”, according to experts at the World Health Organization (WHO).
The virus, which has seen more than 100 cases in Europe, the Americas, and Australia, is expected to spread further, but the overall risk to the wider population is low, WHO experts said on Monday. (23 May).
The virus is most common in remote parts of Central and West Africa and hasn’t seen an outbreak this significant outside the region in 50 years.
However, WHO’s emerging diseases lead Maria Van Kerkhove stressed that “this is a containable situation”.
“We want to stop human-to-human transmission,” Kerkhove said. “We can do this in the non-endemic countries.”
A big reason monkeypox is containable is its low transmissibility, as Kerkhove explained: “Transmission is really happening from skin-to-skin contact, most of the people who have been identified have had more of a mild disease.”
It also “tends not to mutate and [tends] to be fairly stable,” noted WHO’s smallpox secretariat lead Rosamund Lewis. There’s no current supporting evidence to suggest the spreading virus is a mutation.
According to the BBC, Andrea Ammon of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control noted the “likelihood of spread is very low”, but is higher through close contact during sex.
“The likelihood of further spread of the virus through close contact, for example during sexual activities amongst persons with multiple sexual partners, is considered to be high,” Ammon said.
UK officials have confirmed that cases in the country have predominantly been found among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, though a sexual health expert told PinkNews that it’s unclear whether this is because of queer men attending more regular sexual health screenings.
Symptoms of monkeypox include fever, headaches, swellings, aching muscles, and exhaustion. Rashes and lesions may start to appear on the face, hands, and feet.
Monkeypox is not currently considered a sexually transmitted infection, but can still be transmitted through sex. Residents in the UK who have come into contact with a confirmed case are now being asked to isolate themselves for 21 days.
The UN has previously condemned reporting on the virus as “racist and homophobic,” with UNAIDs deputy executive director Matthew Kavanagh telling The Guardian: “Stigma and blame undermine trust and capacity to respond effectively during outbreaks like this one.”
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