Taken together, nearly 38,000 cases of monkeypox infection have been reported in the current outbreak from 387 distinct locations throughout the world. As a result, monkeypox was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) on July 23, 2022.

Despite the rapid rate of new monkeypox infections, the origin of the current epidemic remains unknown. In fact, there is growing evidence that human-to-human transmission of this virus occurred long before the first case of this outbreak was detected in April 2022.