A study recently conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), revealed that the virus could be transmitted via the various household objects and surfaces touched by infected people.
Three months after the start of the monkeypox epidemic outside its endemic zone, the conditions for transmission of the disease are beginning to become clearer. Several Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC, US health authority) investigated the survival of the virus on household objects and other surfaces.
To do this, they took samples from objects and other frequently touched or used household surfaces, from an infected individual. Important detail: the patient had been hospitalized for 15 days at the time of the analyzes and had therefore not returned home since.
27 surfaces still positive out of 31 analyzed
The result was clear: out of the 31 surfaces analyzed, 27 samples were still positive for monkeypox, fifteen days after being handled by an infected person. And whether on porous (cloth, paper…) or non-porous (sealed wood, plastic…) surfaces the positivity rate was the same, although viral load seemed higher on porous materials.
According to this study, the monkeypox virus can indeed be transmitted by this bias. His result suggests that quickly isolating an infected person, and protecting oneself by handling objects used by the latter are good ways to avoid the transmission of monkeypox.