Las Vegas City Wire

A University of Nevada, Las Vegas infectious disease expert has gone on record as to what monkeypox is and how it spreads.

There were 150 confirmed cases in Southern Nevada at the beginning of the month, which is enough to draw the attention of Southern Nevada UNLV infectious disease expert Brian Labus, according to a news release from the university.

“Monkeypox is a viral infection that causes a fever and a rash of pimples or blisters. It spreads mainly by skin-to-skin contact, typically during sexual activity,” said Labus in the release. “It can also be spread through a respiratory route, but it requires prolonged face-to-face contact. It’s not something that is going to spread during your daily activities or in a classroom.”

Labus added that outbreaks over the past 50 years have usually been contained to rural parts of Africa. Rodents are the suspected carrier of the virus who then transmitted it to people they come in contact with.

“There was a small outbreak in the U.S. Midwest in 2003, when pet prairie dogs – infected after being housed near rodents imported from Ghana – came in contact with humans,” said Labus.

The virus reminds Labus of Ebola due because it did not make headlines until it started being seen in urban areas with outbreaks accelerated by sexual activity.

According to Labus: “Once the outbreaks were occurring in urban areas, international travel made monkeypox something that could easily jump borders, which is what we have seen over the past few months.”

Labus added that the silver lining to the virus is that it isn’t spread in the fashion that COVID-19 was.

According to Brian Labus: “With that person-to-person spread across borders, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox to be a pandemic. In doing so, they were stating that it would require international cooperation to get this under control, something that wasn’t necessary when it was a small outbreak in a remote, rural community.”