What is Monkeypox and What Are its Symptoms?

With the recent outbreaks of the disease, it’s normal to ask the question: what is monkeypox? The following information is meant to provide you with a brief overall understanding of this virus. 

What is Monkeypox?

The short answer to what is monkeypox is that it is a virus that is infectious among humans.  That said, as is the case with everything in medicine, there is a great deal more to it than that. This information is meant to help you to understand the basics of this disease. It is not meant as a diagnosis or as medical guidance in any form.

If you would like more information about monkeypox, how to know if you have it, how to treat it, and how to prevent infection, speak with a licensed healthcare provider or use official trusted resources such as the CDC.

What Are the Symptoms?

The most common symptom of monkeypox is a rash.  It can appear on or near the genitals or anus, but may also appear on the hands, face, mouth, chest or feet. This rash will progress through a number of stages before it heals, including scabbing.  At first, it might look like pimples or blisters, and they can be quite painful or itchy.

Other possible symptoms of monkeypox include, but aren’t limited to:

• Chills
• Fever
• Exhaustion
• Headache
• Muscle aches and backache
• Swollen lymph nodes
• Respiratory symptoms such as nasal congestion, cough, sore throat and others.

While some people experience all these symptoms of monkeypox, others experience very few.

How Long Does Monkeypox Last?

It can take up to three weeks from exposure to monkeypox for symptoms to occur, though they might appear sooner.  People who experience the flu-like symptoms will usually develop the rash within 1 to 4 days of having those initial symptoms.

Monkeypox is infectious from the time the symptoms first start until the full healing of the rash, including the last of the scabs, with a new layer of skin formed. Typically, this will mean that an infected person will be sick for 2 to 4 weeks.

How to Prevent Exposure

The CDC recommends the following steps to prevent exposure to monkeypox.

• Avoid touching people with a rash that looks like monkeypox (including any skin-to-skin contact both on or off the rash or scabs)
• Avoid touching any objects and materials touched or used by someone with monkeypox
• Wash your hands regularly using soap and water or hand sanitizer if soap and water is not available.
• People who have been exposed to monkeypox or who are at risk of exposure can request vaccination.

There are no treatments specific to this viral infection. That said, most people will recover on their own with rest. Anyone likely to become severely ill, like people with weakened immune systems, might be treated with antivirals that are used to treat genetically similar viruses such as smallpox.