Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Central and West Africa, and cases in other parts of the world, including the United States, are rare and almost always imported by travel. Belgium on Monday became the first country to impose a mandatory quarantine for monkeypox patients.
cases are part of a swarm of infections reported primarily in Europe and Canada, many of them in men who have sex with men and who may have been exposed to the virus through intimate contact. The four other cases are in men with recent travel, too. The confirmed case is in a Massachusetts man who had recently traveled to Canada.
One confirmed case and four suspected cases of monkeypox, a more benign version of smallpox, have been found in the United States, in Massachusetts, New York, Florida and Utah, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
