What is the difference between monkeypox and Corona.. and is the world heading towards a pandemic?

Arab Weather - The World Health Organization announced on Wednesday the classification of monkeypox as a global public health emergency, which is the highest level of alert in the organization. This decision comes after the outbreak of the disease spread from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to neighboring countries, which caused panic among people around the world, and brought to mind the Covid-19 pandemic that greatly affected the world over two years.

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The difference between monkeypox and COVID-19

Monkeypox is fundamentally different from the coronavirus. While the coronavirus is classified as a coronavirus, monkeypox is an enveloped virus. This classification makes COVID-19 more capable of spreading and mutating, according to the American Society for Microbiology.

• Virus spread and symptoms

Coronavirus is a respiratory virus that spreads through air droplets, making it difficult to control as one person can transmit the virus to many people. Monkeypox, on the other hand, is transmitted mainly through direct contact with an infected person or touching contaminated surfaces, and is considered less transmissible. It can also be transmitted through sexual contact or from mother to fetus during pregnancy.

• Symptoms and death

Symptoms of COVID-19 typically appear two to 14 days after exposure, while monkeypox symptoms can take up to three weeks to appear. Monkeypox symptoms include a rash and pus-filled blisters, while COVID-19 symptoms include fever, chills, and loss of taste or smell.

• Vaccines

While monkeypox is a well-known disease with effective vaccines, their availability is limited in some areas such as Africa and in 2022, developed countries were able to launch effective vaccination campaigns.

Monkeypox potential to become a pandemic

While some experts suggest that monkeypox could spread globally if left uncontained, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control says this is unlikely.

The emergence of new variants of COVID-19 and the virus’s ability to spread through the air have played a major role in its transformation into a global pandemic, which is not the case for monkeypox, which is still well known and has effective vaccines.

The question remains as to whether monkeypox will spread globally two years after the first wave of infections. It is still too early to answer this question, but the disease poses serious challenges in some parts of Africa.

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