In a global comparison, Germany is experiencing a strong outbreak of monkeypox. But positive news is now coming from the RKI: Fewer and fewer cases are being reported. There is news about how long it takes for the disease to surface.
In the case of the monkeypox outbreak in Germany, the number of infected people reported per week continues to fall. After there were at times more than 400 cases per week in July, only 70 or around 30 registered diseases have been recorded for the past two weeks, according to a database of the Robert Koch Institute. The downward trend is also continuing in the particularly affected state of Berlin. It is unclear to what extent late reports will change the picture.
For some of the people affected, the time between suspected infection and the first signs of illness was shorter than assumed. As a recently published RKI study on some of the cases recorded in Germany shows, the incubation period was sometimes only one to three days, which is only known from a study from Spain. In general, three or four days have been considered the lower limit so far, it said.
According to the literature, the maximum incubation period can be 21 days. “The duration of the incubation period may depend on the transmission route, which could explain why we observed shorter incubation periods in the current outbreak with sexual transmission than in previous MPX outbreaks with other transmission routes,” the RKI authors write.
According to the RKI, a shorter incubation period should be considered in the vaccination strategy, as this could limit the effectiveness of the vaccination after contact with a confirmed case. This so-called post-exposure prophylaxis should take place as early as possible within a period of up to 14 days after the contact.
According to the RKI, Germany is one of the countries with the most cases in the context of the global outbreak. The first evidence was in May, according to information from Monday, a good 3530 infected people were recorded nationwide.
