In France, this Wednesday, August 17, the first case of monkeypox in a pet was confirmed. It is an Italian Greyhound dog that lives with its owners, who have also tested positive for this zoonotic disease.
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Beatrice Rodriguez, Emergency physician, veterinarian and coordinator of the Animal Help Group of the Spanish Society, indicated that the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) updated its information about the risks of poxviruses as zoonoses.
For her, the possibility of transmission between domestic animals and humans is real. She added that monkeypox is a virus that can infect a wide range of hosts, so virtually any mammal is at some risk of becoming infected.
In addition, the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECD) has already warned that the virus could be transmitted from people to animals; a group of scientists confirmed it in an article published in The Lancet magazine.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday asked people infected with the monkey virus not to expose animals to the virus.
“This is the first known case of human-to-animal transmission, and we believe the first case of an infected dog,” said Rosamund Lewis, WHO technical director.
In the first instance, the infected human must be isolated from their pet, at the same time there must be a correct management of waste to reduce contamination to rodents and other wild animals.
“The most dangerous situation is when a virus jumps into a small mammal with a high population density,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told reporters.
More than 35,000 cases have been detected since the beginning of the year in 92 countries, and the virus caused 12 deaths, according to the WHO, which described this outbreak as a global health emergency.