Mpox does not easily spread through air: US CDC

Amid the global outbreak of mpox, a US CDC report shows that, unlike Covid-19, the monkeypox virus (MPXV) does not easily spread through the air.

The CDC’s latest ‘Morbidity and Mortality’ weekly report included a study on 113 persons with mpox who travelled on 221 flights during 2021-22.

The results showed that none of the 1,046 passenger contacts got infected.

“Among the 1,046 traveller contacts followed by the US public health agencies, CDC identified no secondary cases,” the report said.

The findings suggest that “travelling on a flight with a person with mpox does not appear to constitute an exposure risk or warrant routine contact tracing activities”.

However, the CDC recommends that people with mpox infections must isolate and delay travel until they are no longer infectious.

Meanwhile, the CDC also pointed out that irrespective of variants, the findings apply to MPXV and both clade I and clade II mpox spread in the same ways.

Primarily, it spreads via close physical or intimate contact with people infected with mpox lesions and “less often via infectious respiratory secretions and fomites”, the CDC said.

This comes as the current outbreak is majorly driven by the clade 1b, which has historically been associated with increased transmissibility.

Mpox, currently spreading rapidly in Africa, infecting both adults and children, has been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is also surging deaths, especially among children, raising concerns of being airborne.

“The situation is different during close contact however, where respiratory droplets could still play a role,” said Dr. Rajeev Jayadevan, co-chairman of the Indian Medical Association’s National Covid-19 Task Force, in a post on X.

Outside of Africa, mpox’s clade 1b has spread to Sweden and Thailand with one case each being reported so far.