Monkeypox cases will 'likely' continue to rise and could turn deadly, an international public health professor has warned.
Professor Jimmy Whitworth of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has spoken out about the monkeypox situation in the UK.
It comes as a further two Scottish cases were confirmed on Thursday by Public Health Scotland, which involved people who have recently travelled abroad, bringing the total count to three.
The UK total has risen to 90 after a further eight cases were identified in England and the first infections in Wales and Northern Ireland were recorded.
UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) teams have been tracing contacts of those with a confirmed case and are advising those at highest risk to isolate for 21 days.
Prof Whitworth told GB News that another lockdown situation will not be needed as long as the spread is brought under control, but 'one percent of cases may die', Wales Online reported.
He said: "I am hopeful that we will get it under control before that (a lockdown) would ever be considered. Monkeypox can be a serious disease. With this West African strain, about one percent of cases may die.
"It is likely that the number of cases will continue to increase until we are able to control transmission which requires identification of all the cases and their contacts. The final size of the outbreak will depend on how quickly we can control transmission."
A variety of theories have been put forward to suggest how monkeypox may have spread widely as part of this latest wave, with some cases linked to a Belgian fetish festival and a superspreader event at an adult sauna in Madrid.
Prof Whitworth said: "Monkeypox is endemic in west and central Africa, where it spreads to humans from small mammals.
"It will have arrived in Europe and the USA through travellers from west Africa who had been exposed to the infection, travelled while incubating the infection, and then developed the disease once they had arrived.
"This is the first outbreak of monkeypox to occur outside Africa with widespread multinational distribution and dozens of cases.
"There is community spread and no obvious links between all of the cases. That means there is undocumented transmission occurring."
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