Boston Children's Hospital researchers part of international investigation of monkeypox
BOSTON - A team of researchers at Boston Children's Hospital has now become a source of information on monkeypox for organizations charged with stemming the spread.
"We're essentially providing the WHO, CDC and others with highly detailed information on every case to help with the investigation, to help with modeling, help with forecasting and ultimately help put an end to the spread of this virus," Dr. John Brownstein told WBZ-TV Monday.
Brownstein leads that team in collaboration with Oxford and Georgetown universities in a data-science initiative called Global.health.
They've been tracking monkeypox for the last couple of weeks, looking at who is impacted and how it's spreading.
"Clearly what we've recognized over the last several days is this virus has been spreading globally for at least a couple weeks and went undetected to the point where now we're seeing cases pop up in many countries around the world," Dr. Brownstein said.
By their count, there are up to 200 confirmed or suspected cases across 18 countries now, including the first confirmed case in the U.S this year at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Based on their latest data, Dr. Brownstein echoes other health experts saying monkeypox appears to be "much more" challenging to transmit than a virus like COVID.
"It's unlikely to create any kind of the impact that we've seen with COVID. That being said, any emerging infections that come out of animal populations (and) impacts humans is something for us to be concerned about and this virus does highlight the important need for us to put resources in to identifying viruses as early as possible before they become a global problem," he told WBZ.
As for modes of transmission Dr. Brownstein said they're still working to better understand that.