By Jacqueline Howard and Michael Nedelman, CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/02/health/monkeypox-endemic-silent-spread/index.html

Updated 5:55 AM EDT, Fri June 3, 2022CNN—

A monkeypox outbreak continues to grow in countries where the virus isn’t normally found, putting global health officials on high alert.

Now with more than 643 cases of monkeypox in dozens of countries where the virus is not endemic, “the sudden appearance ofmonkeypoxin many countries at the same time suggests there may have been undetected transmission for some time,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday.

The virus has been circulating for decades in some places, including parts of West and Central Africa. In earlyresearch posted this week, scientists at the ​​Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh described how the genetic pattern they’re seeing suggests that “there has been sustained human to human transmission since at least 2017.”

More than 550 monkeypox cases have been reported…