Egyptian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar said on Saturday that it is unlikely that mpox (Monkeypox) will cause another pandemic like COVID-19, and assured it will have a very low chance of spreading in Egypt.

He explained that epidemics, including the most recent ones such as swine flu and COVID-19, usually erupt due to airborne viruses that spread quickly and when infected people may not show symptoms.

Abdel-Ghaffar continued that monkeypox spreads primarily through close skin contact with infected people or their dirty clothes or bed sheets.

The disease also often causes visible skin lesions that can make people less likely to come into close contact with others.

Abdel-Ghaffar noted that unlike the coronavirus, monkeypox spreads very slowly.

He said that shortly after the coronavirus was identified in China, the number of cases jumped dramatically from several hundred to several thousand in a single week, by about tenfold.

He added that in March 2020, when the World Health Organization described COVID-19 as a pandemic, there were more than 126,000 cases and 4,600 deaths — about three months after the coronavirus was first identified.

“In contrast, it has taken since 2022 until now for monkeypox cases to reach nearly 100,000 globally, with about 200 deaths, according to the World Health Organization,” the health spokesman said.

Abdel-Ghaffar stressed that there are vaccines and treatments available for monkeypox, unlike the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He assured world has what it needs to stop monkeypox, and “this is not the same situation we faced during Covid when there was no vaccine or antiviral.”

There remains a need for more coordination and integration at the global health level to achieve this, he said.