The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a study Friday suggesting that people wear masks to protect themselves from monkeypox despite growing evidence the virus is transmitted sexually.
The CDC’s Friday Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), its internal journal, included research on the spread of monkeypox via contaminated surfaces. Researchers in Utah sampled 30 different samples from the home of two monkeypox patients, and found that 21 of the surfaces yielded positive real-time PCR results, but none tested positive for viral cultures.
Still, despite the lack of live virus found in the samples, the paper still warns that monkeypox can spread through surface contact. The agency also recommends wearing masks at the bottom of the paper, even though little evidence has emerged that monkeypox is an airborne virus. (RELATED: Man’s Nose Rots After Monkeypox, Syphilis And HIV Infection)
“Monkeypox virus primarily spreads through close, personal, often skin-to-skin contact with the rash, scabs, lesions, body fluids, or respiratory secretions of a person with monkeypox; transmission via contaminated objects or surfaces (i.e., fomites) is also possible,” the paper reads. “Persons living in or visiting the home of someone with monkeypox should follow appropriate precautions against indirect exposure and transmission by wearing a well-fitting mask, avoiding touching possibly contaminated surfaces, maintaining appropriate hand hygiene, avoiding sharing eating utensils, clothing, bedding, or towels, and following home disinfection recommendations.”
The CDC’s own website doesn’t list airborne transmission as a way monkeypox spreads. The Santa Clara County, California, Health Department is telling the public that monkeypox isn’t airborne. Reuters has fact-checked claims that the CDC believes monkeypox is airborne as false.
You are not at of risk from getting monkeypox through everyday contact with people. It is not airborne like COVID. Monkeypox is primarily transmitted through direct, physical skin on skin contact, on any part of the body that has the rash. pic.twitter.com/7jIE8Jmqkn
— Healthy SCC (@HealthySCC) August 18, 2022
“Monkeypox does not spread through airborne particles or droplets, therefore, is not considered to be an airborne virus,” Dr. Rafael E. Pérez-Figueroa, associate dean of Community Engagement and Public Health Practice at the Rutgers School of Public Health, told Prevention.com. “Airborne transmission occurs when small virus particles become suspended in the air and can stay there for periods of time. These particles can spread on air currents and infect people in far distances. That is not the case with the monkeypox virus.”
More and more evidence is emerging that suggests the virus is spread primarily through homosexual male sex, although women and heterosexuals can still be infected. Several studies have found that sex itself, not close skin-to-skin contact, is causing the spread, and that the virus is carried in semen.
