As COVID-19 cases rise, there’s still some concern about the monkeypox virus, which has been drawing headlines in recent weeks. Now, a doctor recently talked about what it’s like to get it.

Monkeypox spreads in the U.S.

Per STAT News, more than 200 people across 27 states have possibly been exposed to the monkeypox virus due to a single case from a Dallas resident who got the virus after he traveled to Texas from Nigeria.

How monkeypox spreads

Donna Tyungu, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor at Oklahoma University Health, recently told KOCO-TV that monkeypox is so rare that it surprised her to see it arrive in the United States. And, she said, it’s hard to spread the virus.

  • “Unlike COVID-19, which is aerosol, it’s large droplets that go from person to person through respiratory spread, and you have to be interacting with people for a good, long period of time,” Tyungu told KOCO-TV.

A look at monkeypox symptoms

Tyungu said monkeypox starts with fever, headache and muscle pain. As I wrote for the Deseret News, some of the top symptoms for monkeypox include swollen lymph nodes, chills and exhaustion.

  • “One to three days after a fever, you typically start to have these lesions, these vesicles, develop,” Tyungu said, per KOCO. “They start on your face and move down your body.”
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Tyungu said doctors are more concerned about the delta variant right now.

  • “A lot of us are pretty apprehensive with school starting without our children being masked, knowing what we know and understand about the new delta variant,” she said.
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