Monkeypox: Isolate for three weeks if you’re a close contact

As global cases continue to rise, a warning to Britons

HIGH-RISK close contacts of monkeypox sufferers are being told to self-isolate for three weeks and to avoid contact with children.

The UK is set to update its advice for monkeypox patients this week to cope with the unusual outbreak.

Health officials are telling anyone who has spent at least one night under the same roof as an infectious person to avoid contact with children under the age of 12 and self-isolate for three weeks.

That is twice as long as the selfisolation advice for contacts of those with Covid at the height of the pandemic, because the ‘incubation period’ is much longer.

As with Covid, someone who has come within one metre of an infected person is classed as a monkeypox contact.

This lower category of contact, which also includes sitting next to a person with monkeypox on a plane, means a tracer will call the person every day for three weeks and they will be advised to stay off work for 21 days if their job involves children or immuno-suppressed colleagues.

The UK has stopped short of requiring people by law to quaranUniversity tine if they develop monkeypox, but ministers are considering a public health campaign to alert gay and bisexual men, because of the number of cases in this group.

Keith Neal, emeritus professor in the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the of Nottingham, said: ‘We need to take urgent action to make sure the current monkeypox outbreak burns out, including tracing the contacts of people who are infected and offering them a smallpox vaccination, which we are doing in the UK.

‘We will need to see how it goes in the UK in terms of whether it is necessary to have mandatory three-week quarantine periods.

‘But I can’t see many of these people wanting to go out when they are feeling ill with horrible pustules on their body.’

With around 120 confirmed or suspected cases of monkeypox around the world, US President Joe Biden said ‘everyone should be concerned about’ the disease.

There were 20 cases of monkeypox in the UK as of Friday, but Dr Susan Hopkins, a chief adviser for the UK Health Security Agency, said officials were detecting more cases ‘on a daily basis’.

There had previously been only eight cases in the UK since 2018, all related to travel from Africa.

Dr Hopkins told the BBC: ‘We don’t know where this infection has come from and how it’s come in to Europe. There is no obvious connection in our cases in the UK to a single event.’

A large proportion of cases in the UK are being found in gay and bisexual men.

Asked why it is being found in that demographic, Dr Hopkins said: ‘Because of the frequent close contacts they may have. We would recommend to anyone who’s having changes in sex partners regularly, or having close contact with individuals that they don’t know, to come forward if they develop a rash.’

Those believed to be at high risk of developing symptoms are being offered a smallpox vaccine, which can provide protection from monkeypox, with health officials aiming to give it to contacts of patients within four or five days of the patients developing symptoms.

Dr Hopkins said the risk to the general population ‘remains extremely low at the moment’, but people ‘need to be alert to it’.

The disease is now present in at least 15 countries outside Africa.