Talk:2022–2023 mpox outbreak/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Dates in table

Uhooep: I just saw your update to the table. Note that the date column I added was for the date of last data update. I saw you changed it to date of first case. I partially undid that change, but I think it makes sense, and I'm going to add the two columns. Just noting it here to avoid edit conflicts. Sounds good? Best, MarioGom (talk) 18:23, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Sure MarioGom. I was already working on a table with date of first case in my sandbox here. The dates are correct as per the sources. KR Uhooep (talk) 18:26, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Uhooep: I have to go away for a while. Feel free to add the column again. Otherwise, I'll do it when I'm back. Best, MarioGom (talk) 18:28, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I see you got it  Done. Thanks! MarioGom (talk) 18:40, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Genome?

Do we need a page or section on the genome? Most of that info on COVID seems to one the variants page, or like under microbiology on the coronavirus page. JuanTamad (talk) 00:45, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

I see no such material here yet. Start a section, and then we'll see if it merits being converted into the "summary [here]/for more information [elsewhere]" format. 2A02:8071:184:DA00:64B1:BDB9:C2A8:F521 (talk) 04:40, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Map

why is French Guyana colored? has a case been reported there as well? 2600:1702:9F0:D140:FD69:4D92:D029:8342 (talk) 08:08, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

French Guiana, which belongs to France Uhooep (talk) 10:36, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

First case in Switzerland

the first case of a human infected by the emerging monkey pox virus have been reported by the national health service of switzerland — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.15.44.90 (talk) 15:35, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

References

Edit request

Would do it myself, but am on mobile. I don't know where this figure of 22 for Canada comes from; latest reports state five confirmed and a "couple dozen" cases under investigation. CBC Global News

Also, I think the chart should be separated from the WHO response section and the WHO figures (80 confirmed, 50 suspected, 11 countries) should be mentioned. [1] MSG17 (talk) 15:52, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

MSG17: Someone fixed the Canada figures. According to CBC there's now a couple dozen suspect cases in Canada, but I haven't found a better source confirming if it's exactly 24 or it's meant to be an approximation.

 Done the split of the table section as you suggested Special:Diff/1089069145. MarioGom (talk) 19:08, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Have a great day. MSG17 (talk) 02:56, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Spain data, 20 May 2022

There's now an official update of confirmed cases in Spain, which totals to 30 [2]. There are previously suspect cases, but I didn't see yet the current suspect count. It is currently NOT 30 confirmed + 29 suspect. I'm looking into the sources to see if this is clarified somewhere. MarioGom (talk) 10:39, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Nevermind, found it in the same source. It is currently 30 confirmed + 6 suspect cases. MarioGom (talk) 10:40, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Uhooep: please see above. MarioGom (talk) 10:42, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. El Pais seems more reliable and up to date than the source I added. Uhooep (talk) 10:46, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Yep, for Spain, some good sources are RTVE, El País, or La Vanguardia, among others. I'd be suspicious of sources that do not explicitly mention the source for each figure (Health Ministry for confirmed cases, usually regional governments for suspect cases). Given the lack of clear and centralized official reporting, some media outlets mess up when adding figures from multiple sources, etc. MarioGom (talk) 10:50, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Anyway, it seems my last update is still not correct. Reviewing other sources, since they differ in how they interpreted the confirmed cases count (21 vs 30), and also more regions reported suspect cases. MarioGom (talk) 11:04, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Regional updates are reaching the media now. So apparently the numbers are currently as follows:

• Ministry of Health: 23 confirmed cases at national level, there are conflicting reports about whether it is 7 previous cases + 23 new cases = 30 total confirmed cases (El País [3], Cadena SER [4], La Vanguardia [5], elDiario.es [6]), or 23 confirmed cases in total (El Mundo [7]). I'm going for 30 confirmed cases because almost every recent and reliable source in Spain is consistent with this at the moment.
• According to El País at 12:09, 22 20 May 2022 [8]: 6 suspect cases. This was probably correct, but now probably outdated as more regional reports are published.
• Madrid: 21 confirmed cases (already included in the national total by Ministry of Health) and 19 suspect cases (La Vanguardia [9], El Mundo [10]).
• Canary Islands: no update, so it is not clear whether the previously reported suspect case is included in 20 May's national update for confirmed cases.
• Andalucia: 1 new suspect case reported by regional government (Diario de Sevilla [11]). MarioGom (talk) 11:25, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey - nice effort on collecting the stats for Spain!

Two questions: "According to El País at 12:09, 22 May 2022" -> this must have been a typo, the article is from the 20th, right? (I'd correct it above myself, but thought that might be taken as rude...)

Second - in general, Spain seems to be the country (together with the UK), with the most recognised cases. I've also seen one (vague english language) source speaking about community transmission - this would be something I think should be in the article, so if anyone can point out a good source (and eg who is saying that), that'd be great!

Regards Sean Heron (talk) 19:07, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Sean Heron: Indeed, it was a typo! I have noted it in my previous comment. Indeed, reliable sources in Spain are unanimous about community transmission. Several transmission chains have been traced within the country. MarioGom (talk) 10:27, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Numbers don't match

infobox currently has 111 cases while table has 109. Rmhermen (talk) 17:19, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

As we update the table, including corrections from bad updates, totals get out of sync. So they need to be updated. Also, there's been occasional updates directly to the infobox totals that were not supported by any citation, or that were sync'd from less-than-reliable sources, see #Use of trackers for statistics. MarioGom (talk) 08:54, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

cases in US

the articles qt the bottom suggest, 4 suspected not three. the confirmed one in massachusets, a potential in Florida, NYC and one other. Update table. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:F48E:55D8:8465:265B (talk) 04:46, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Could you provide a link to a reliable source supporting this? MarioGom (talk) 09:03, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Map needs updating

Greece and Switzerland need to be shaded. Can someone check that? 2600:1702:9F0:D140:D0DE:4011:DE54:449D (talk) 05:56, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I also think that Sierra Leone is a different blue for some reason. Armaanikaks (talk) 13:06, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

See the legend. A different shade of blue is used for countries where the West African clade is endemic. These are not considered part of the 2022 outbreak. MarioGom (talk) 10:29, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Uh this can't be real

"All linked to the gay fetish festival Darklands in Antwerp" Sus 64.53.196.163 (talk) 18:43, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Sounds outlandish, but may be real. Not info I think is warranted for the lede paragraph though, so I guess I'll cut it out. Sean Heron (talk) 18:47, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Even in the body, this is the sort of thing where there's a strong risk of nonsense so we need to make sure we have quality RS making the claim before including it. Nil Einne (talk) 20:09, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Bad official data from Madrid, Spain during the weekend

A misleading report from Madrid's regional government went out during the weekend, claiming 39 confirmed cases in Madrid, when it seems they were 30. Many reliable sources published this on Saturday/Sunday. See today's clarification on La Vanguardia and EFE. I'm waiting for further official updates, which presumably will come out during the morning, to update to the correct up-to-date counts. MarioGom (talk) 09:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Sources and figures are now up to date for Spain. Please, do not change them based on the BNO News tracker. They have not kept up with the latest official data and corrections, and it often contains errors. See also #Use of trackers for statistics. MarioGom (talk) 13:49, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure how should we update Spain data moving forward. Reporting based on regional report aggregation is currently an absolute chaos. Reliable sources have a lot of disparaties, it's not clear if they use comparable methodologies, or when they got the last data point for each region. Today, for the first time, suspect cases at national level have been disclosed. The Carlos III Health Institute, the institution in charge of centralized case confirmation, has disclosed that they received samples from 67 cases, 36 of them have been confirmed, 9 have tested negative and have been discarded, and 22 of them are pending results (ConSalud, elDiario.es, etc). This is probably the most reliable data point, in the sense that we know it contains no double counting, or counting of cases that tested negative, etc. However, it may lag regional reports by about 24 hours. On the other hand, other sources doing region-level aggregation have a lot of disparities among them, and I'm not sure which one is the most reliable. I think we generally shouldn't mix-n-match multiple sources, because it's too easy that we end up double counting cases. Thoughts? MarioGom (talk) 17:32, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

That's not the national level, that's the double check, it was also happening with COVID at first then they stopped because of the high number of cases. At the regional level, there are the regional health ministries' sites as an official source, and some Spanish sites that aggregate the data, like the one we were using, it's like instead of one country we have 10, difficult but nothing impossible. Emanuele676 (talk) 17:41, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Emanuele676: The Carlos III Health Institute figures are national-level, because all samples are sent there for confirmation. However, they report later (because all the logistics and bureaucracy hops). Regional government reports are published earlier, and they can be aggregated. So, as you say, it's not impossible, but I didn't find so far any reliable source that is keeping up with region-level aggregation properly. ABC has done a fairly good job today, but they seem to be outdated now. El Confidencial seems to be doing a decent job too. I've been considering these two for updates. I don't think we should be doing the aggregation ourselves unless data is very clear and cross-checked in multiple reliable sources. Otherwise, we're getting into WP:OR/WP:SYNC territory, and it'd be easy that we double counted cases (e.g. adding cases whose samples tested negative like the 9 mentioned above, or that are already counted in the confirmed column).

In the early days of COVID-19, we had multiple sources doing quite high quality region-level aggregation (if I recall correctly, RTVE and El Confidencial, among others). But it seems we're not there yet. MarioGom (talk) 17:52, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, in fact we are doing aggregation, since for individual countries we do not rely on WHO or ECDC or equivalent. And there are official sources for regions as well, if you wish. More than anything else, it will be a problem to include 3-4 sources, or more. Emanuele676 (talk) 17:59, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I have no problem with including 3 or 4 (or 10) citations if they are reliable, and if they do not contradict each other. Although I would prefer to rely on 1 or 2 secondary reliable sources alone. Unfortunately, there are no good direct official sources for every region (yet). As far as I've seen, in some regions we just have indirect declarations to the media, sometimes updating confirmed and suspect cases together, sometimes only one of them, and in the last few days, there's been a couple of examples where journalists were confused about the new numbers being totals in the region, or new cases to be added on top of the previous one. I'm just a bit disappointed with the quality of data, both by official sources, as well as secondary sources.

For what it's worth, by El Confidencial reporting, we're currently at 38 confirmed cases and 61 suspected cases. If we go with region-level aggregation, I would be ok updating the table to these figures. MarioGom (talk) 18:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Emanuele676: Keep in mind that, while it's nice to include the URL to the source in the edit summary, the sources for content updates should be cited in the article. I understand you prefer continuing with region-level aggregation. Maybe we can collaborate here to find the most reliable source for each region? If we could find one reliable and up-to-date source for each region, then we can add a footnote with the breakdown and all required citations. What do you think? MarioGom (talk) 18:29, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I checked El Confidencial and it seems to me that they are up to date as counts, more than Wikipedia, so I guess you can use it to update the Wikipedia table and as a source. If no one does it, I'll do it later when I can. Emanuele676 (talk) 18:37, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Let's see how this evolves. Best, MarioGom (talk) 18:45, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• Cifras Confiables: Please, see the initial message in this thread. Did you get these numbers from BNO News? There was a misleading update during the weekend, which every reliable source in Spain has corrected this morning, but BNO News seems to insist in keeping it (along other errors in the last few days). MarioGom (talk) 22:19, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  Given local time in Spain, it's very unlikely that there is any actual update until 24 May morning local time. MarioGom (talk) 22:25, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  What has happened now is what I wanted to avoid, we cancelled at least 13 cases (99-51-35) from Spain for no reason at all, just because the state double check did not say how many cases they still have to examine... Emanuele676 (talk) 16:18, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  And we also lost the specification at the regional level, and so it will be impossible to update that number unless we use the same source. That may decide to publish the data once a week, just to say.... Emanuele676 (talk) 16:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

  Meanwhile, the source we were using until yesterday speaks of 50 positive and 40 suspected cases, with specification for individual regions. --Emanuele676 (talk) 17:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Israel case

The case for Israel is only suspected in the source, so should it be said in the section which lists the amounts of cases for each country? Grey13z (talk) 20:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

canary islands shading

are we shading it since there are cases traced back to that, even if cases haven’t been reported there. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:4CF8:F0AF:1223:8E93 (talk) 05:45, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes. There are confirmed cases in the Canary Islands and they are shaded in the map. You'll need to zoom to see them. MarioGom (talk) 07:29, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

If the number of total cases gets past 1000 and is still growing, change title to 'epidemic'

see title — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:3D09:1F80:CA00:A084:8F0C:9CC3:7FDB (talk) 01:00, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Based on what source? Quoting epidemic: For example, in meningococcal infections, an attack rate in excess of 15 cases per 100,000 people for two consecutive weeks is considered an epidemic.

Even if the 1000 cases were within Britain, they would amount to about 1.6 per 100k. But the bottom line is, we follow reliable sources - in this case, it remains to be seen whether mainstream media get out ahead of health authorities, or if the contagion is contained before it gets to that point. 2A02:8071:184:DA00:64B1:BDB9:C2A8:F521 (talk) 04:38, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

• Since this is now global, any epidemic status is contingent on the WHO referring to it as that​​. It might not gain epidemic status if the WHO and national responses are effective. We will know much more in the coming days. CutePeach (talk) 12:51, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  The virus has spread throughout many continents tho 73.126.133.15 (talk) 19:06, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

  CutePeach is correct that we need the WHO to declare it an epidemic or at least it called as such in WP:MEDRS, not editors opinions it's an epidemic because of the geographical spread or number of cases. Nil Einne (talk) 20:06, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Expand article scope?

Cases have now been reported in Portugal and the US, with more potential cases in Spain. Ionmars10 (talk) 21:20, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Highly Support ~40-50 cases in Spain, 18 cases in Quebec, a case in Massachusetts- the scope of the article must expand to global or worldwide or we can change the name to "2022 monkeypox outbreak" Yokohama1989 (talk) 22:01, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

(40-50 suspected, 13 in Quebec, misread) Yokohama1989 (talk) 22:05, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Agree to expand scope into "2022 monkeypox outbreak". ~ AntisocialRyan (talk) 22:53, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

I just moved the page and created redirect of “2022 monkeypox outbreak in (country)” for the countries with cases. Feel free to remove the redirect and expand any of them into an article if desired. Elijahandskip (talk) 00:28, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Maybe ¨2022 Monkeypox Epidemic¨? 73.126.133.15 (talk) 17:27, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Support with sigh... Respiratory, digestive, monkeypox, and what else? Johnson.Xia (talk) 20:57, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

This seems to be undisputed, but just for the record: Support. MarioGom (talk) 14:15, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Add African countries?

I´ve also noticed that a lot of African countries are colored but are not in the infobox if this is a mistake could I add it 73.126.133.15 (talk) 19:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC).

I suggest listing only countries with new cases of monkeypox, some African countries have monkeypox pandemic from before. A09090091 (talk) 20:06, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the alert really helps 73.126.133.15 (talk) 21:13, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

The article should better reflect this, but note that this is about the global 2022 outbreak, while most cases in African countries seem to be from countries were it's endemic or part of far older outbreaks. MarioGom (talk) 08:57, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Spain update, 24 May

There's an update of the total confirmed cases to 51 (El Confidencial). 35 previously suspect cases have tested negative and are now discarded. However, I didn't find yet how many suspect cases are there right now. MarioGom (talk) 16:01, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

For now, I have updated the confirmed cases column to 51, and have left the suspect cases to blank while we have no up-to-date figure for it. We may add it again if there are up-to-date reliable sources. MarioGom (talk) 16:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

El Confidencial is updating region-level breakdown, including suspect cases updates for some regions. I'm cross-checking with other sources to add the new suspected cases count. MarioGom (talk) 17:08, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Most regions have not updated their data today. There were some scattered updates, such as the Extremadura case testing negative. 47 out of 51 confirmed cases are from Madrid, there's 20 new suspect cases from Madrid. However, there's no up-to-date reliable sources for suspect cases beyond these 20 in Madrid. MarioGom (talk) 19:15, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

We can rely on the new El Confidential map. Emanuele676 (talk) 20:09, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

That was my initial idea, but last time I checked it was quite obvious that data was only partially updated. For example, their confirmed cases added up to 50, not 51. There is 1 confirmed case that is not attributed to any region by any source. The problem with this partial update is that it's hard to know which suspect cases have tested negative, which have been confirmed, or which are new. Anyway, I'm not completely opposed to adding all suspected cases from El Confidencial for now, and assume it's a decent and temporary approximation. Hopefully tomorrow reports are clearer. MarioGom (talk) 20:48, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, adding up their current counts gives 43 suspect cases. The 20 from Madrid were confirmed by the regional government early in the evening, so they are probably good, and there's some uncertainty about the rest. MarioGom (talk) 20:52, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Since we do not enter cases that have tested negative, we do not care much about which suspected cases were negative, positive or are new. 51-43 seems like an acceptable solution to me, over time the data will be more similar to each other and/or El Confidential will directly use state data. Emanuele676 (talk) 21:09, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, feel free to add that figure if it sounds reasonable. MarioGom (talk) 21:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

WikiProject Current Events now has a task force for the outbreak

I just began the Monkeypox outbreak task force housed under the WikiProject of Current events. Feel free to join the task force! Elijahandskip (talk) 06:15, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Table sorting

The cases table is currently sorted alphabetically. I think this is not very meaningful. See, for example, {{COVID-19 data}}. I think we should sort it by descending confirmed cases (ties sorted by suspect cases, then alphabetically). What do you think? MarioGom (talk) 13:32, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

The tables are sortable, why should we waste our time sorting them, with data that change from day to day, sometimes even in the negative due to an error of the institutions as in Spain, when the user can do it without any problem? Emanuele676 (talk) 13:39, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, fair enough. I think the default sorting to confirmed cases is more relevant, but right now it might be too much of a burden to keep it manually sorted. MarioGom (talk) 13:59, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Add Argentina and Denmark into the map

Confirmed cases have been reported in these countries so it should be bolded. 73.126.133.15 (talk) 21:49, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Status on table

i believe we are only counting confirmed cases for map shading. But why does Canada and Spain have so many suspected by untested results, shouldn’t we likely see an update soon. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:8C31:1767:58EA:51F7 (talk) 07:46, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

In Spain, every regional Government reports suspected cases very early, once they are clinically assessed, but before a PCR. Then it takes some time until all lab tests are performed. Other countries' health services only report cases once they are confirmed in lab tests. MarioGom (talk) 08:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Finland needs shading

Finland needs shading on the map could anyone shade? 73.126.133.15 (talk) 23:52, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Norway not on picture

I checked the picture that tells us which countries monkeypox has gotten to, and I realized '''Norway''' was not on is this a problem? 73.126.133.15 (talk) 18:35, 22 May 2022 (UTC).

Thank you for the heads up, yes, if a county has reported a case, but the map does not show that, then that is not the way it should be!

I'll check the map now (including for Greece and Switzerland, which were mentioned two sections above). Sean Heron (talk) 18:39, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Soo - Norway is not included on the table of countries that have reported a case (and if they haven't then of course they don't get shaded on the map!).

I'll look for info on Norway now, and update the table and map accordingly (if there is a case there).

(Switzerland and Greece have been added on the map by someone else already, btw.)

Sean Heron (talk) 18:45, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the information about Greece and Switzerland. I think Norway has gotten only one case by the sources i´ve gotten. 73.126.133.15 (talk) 18:53, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Just going by the article here, both Greece and Norway are described in the lede as having only one suspected case. I think I'll not change anything right now though, since I'm not very happy with the map in general (I think it makes more sense to have an outbreak specific one, rather than the current hybrid of outbreak and general spread / endemicity of both existing monkeybox variants - I'll discuss that in a new section though). Sean Heron (talk) 18:58, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Btw, I don´t know if this counts but I found this source here 73.126.133.15 (talk) 19:05, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I think we could also add the African countries into the infobox as there is many. 73.126.133.15 (talk) 19:07, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

References

Question to other editors - re epidemiology ("gap" in transmission chain, spead of growth)

Hey, to others interested in the topic / doing stuff here:

I've been reading up today on whats behind the "monkeypox" headlines to be seen here and there, and this was the final place I checked by. Reading it (the article here), one thing that surprised me is that there seems to be a rather gaping "hole" in the chain of transmission between the identified index case (person with travel history to Nigeria, self presented at hospital on day of arrival), and then the next known cases (a couple in London).

Also the number of cases, given the short amount of time - is pretty mind-boggling to me, coming from following the coronavirus pandemic and knowing the "growth rates" that had in the early stages.

I'd be interested what other people here make of this? (I have to admit I'm a little surprised that the gap in the transmission chain wasn't mentioned in any of the news articles I'd been reading).

Regards Sean Heron (talk) 15:45, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Addition - I guess I was so struck that I was in "ask first, read up better later" mode: So the missing links in transmission are addressed in the article ( "None of these new cases had any known contact history with the previous three confirmed cases, suggesting that wider community transmission of the virus was now underway in the London area" . Weird that this is not a more prominent part of media reporting though... ).

Oh also minor correction to myself - I meant the "two people living in one household", when I wrote "a couple in London". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sean Heron (talk • contribs) 15:59, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

It's starting to get reported more see e.g. this BBC article [12]. We probably should cover this better in our article. Nil Einne (talk) 20:13, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm starting to have the feeling there are no reporters out there that have done the maths or tried to put together a picture of the whole situation for themselves yet (rather than asking an expert, which is of course the regular - and easier :P - way its done). Sean Heron (talk) 20:43, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

(note: previous comments refactored for ease of reading) According to this El Pais article "Investigations have revealed that the virus began circulating in the capital [Madrid ] during the second half of April, although the majority of known infections so far occurred around the weekend of 7 and 8 May." (Thats the DeepL translation). Sean Heron (talk) 21:29, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

-> that would explain a lot to me, but would mean that what's largely been taken as the index case of the outbreak (May 4th in UK) would just be a coincidental imported case (or at least the index case of an entirely separate cluster/outbreak to the Spanish one). Sean Heron (talk) 20:43, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

P.S. The full El Pais article definitely seems worth a read to me for anyone interested in the broader picture, btw ! Sean Heron (talk) 21:29, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Change map to only include countries from current outbreak

I think this will convey the information we want to provide better than a map that includes both information on the current outbreak (ie which countries currently have reported cases) as well as on the "historic" background (that is, which different strains of monkeybox exist, and where are they endemic). Comments / Thoughts ? Sean Heron (talk) 20:20, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
P.S. (I'm happy to implement the change myself, svg should be easy enough to edit).
P.P.S. I think some of the confusion regarding eg which countries to include in the infobox would be resolved by this as well, as then the countries listed in the infobox, the cases in the table, and the map would all be representing the same info.

PPPS - this is how it was done for the 2003 Midwest monkeypox outbreak as well. Sean Heron (talk) 20:25, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, go for it. If any issues arise, we can BRD it. — PerfectSoundWhatever (t; c) 20:33, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Ok :). I've reached out to the person that put in the effort for the current map, and will probably give this a shot tomorrow. Sean Heron (talk) 21:47, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes! Or create a new one. On Wikidata the COVID-19 pandemic has a similar map. ~ AntisocialRyan (talk) 22:52, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, you can see my response here. TL;DR: a second map showing the current outbreak in countries where monkeypox is not endemic, maybe shaded by case numbers, would be useful. ArcMachaon (talk) 23:41, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

i have noticed that the textbox at the top is always off by 1 case

yeah the textbox is always off by one case for some reason, so i have been editing it a lot guys. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:B0E2:C74A:B29C:4F9B (talk) 21:34, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Hospitalization figures

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any source for hospitalization figures. MSG17 (talk) 11:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I believe there are few reports of hospitalizations because the disease is mild (although uncomfortable) when treated. Most are simply self-isolating. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 12:20, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Also, the first case in Germany is reportedly hospitalized for isolation, not for treatment. His illness was mild at the time of the report. I'm not sure about isolation policies in other countries, but counting the number of hospitalizations and assuming they are severe cases could be misleading for this reason. 2A01:C22:7B35:CA00:7830:1D09:B171:AD97 (talk) 12:39, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Germany

Germany is listed at having 12 cases here but they are all individual references. I can't find that total in a single reference but the total we have of 5 confirmed cases here for Germany is probably out of date now. Uhooep (talk) 06:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

The RKI website might be worth checking / could have numbers. I'll have a look later on. Sean Heron (talk) 06:58, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

See:

• "Germany orders 40,000 vaccine doses as precaution against monkeypox spread". Reuters. 25 May 2022. So far, five cases have been registered in Germany, all men, said Lothar Wieler, the head of Germany's Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases, also speaking at the press conference.

The cited press conference was held on Tuesday, 24 May, so it might be outdated. MarioGom (talk) 07:28, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I couldn't find any numbers regarding the monkeypox outbreak on the RKI's website, sorry. I'm guessing they're not publishing (yet). Sean Heron (talk) 12:10, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

The section of the RKI website regarding monkeypox is here. On the right, there is a link to Internationaler Affenpocken-Ausbruch: Einschätzung der Situation in Deutschland. This is the ref for the current number of infections in Germany. You may find the numbers in the first lines (i.e. Mit Stand 25.5.2022 sind 10 Affenpockenfälle aus 5 Bundesländern […] ans RKI übermittelt worden [for 25 May 2022: 10 cases from 5 states]) --ElLutzo (talk) 00:29, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much! (Not got time for checking right now, hope the article reflects that :P). Also, concerning the number of cases is going up like that :( ... Sean Heron (talk) 06:25, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Argentina

Emanuele676, the source says it is highly suspected. Which source says it is confirmed? How do you know that it is confirmed before the results of the sequencing are published? WP:OR? --C messier (talk) 16:57, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

The source says they are waiting for sequencing, which is sufficient since it is the only virus in that family that you can expect to find in a human. In all the other nation's cases are included in the confirmed already after the swab, also because often countries just talk about "confirmed" without specifying further. If we were to move all the cases after the swab alone we would have to redo the whole table, unnecessarily, unless it turns out that there is another Poxvirus outbreak that is not monkeypox...

If you then want to move the case to suspects, go ahead, sooner or later it will be confirmed. Emanuele676 (talk) 17:54, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Another case is this Emanuele676 (talk) 18:30, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

In Greece they had a swap in a suspected case that ended up being chickenpox (they look quite similar). If "all the other nation's cases are included in the confirmed already after the swab" that is wrong. They must be included after the confirmation, otherwise it isn't confirmed. If the organisations mention them as confirmed, then they are confirmed. If they mention they are suspected, then mention them in the table as suspected. The finnish case from what I understand hasn't been confirmed. C messier (talk) 18:33, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

If they are indeed confirmed, then it should be changed. C messier (talk) 18:37, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

No, chickenpox and monkeypox are two different families of viruses, even if in English the name is similar, it is impossible that he has chickenpox. The case in Greece was in fact 'suspected', meaning that it had similar symptoms and a possible correlation with a case, but there was no test result. Here we are talking about swab-confirmed cases, which narrows down the virus to a specific family, and of that family there is only one species that can be identified, unless a further species jump is discovered during a monkeypox pandemic. Emanuele676 (talk) 18:56, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Yet it isn't mentioned to be confirmed in the announcement. C messier (talk) 19:23, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

"The study was performed with the negative staining technique for electron microscopy, determining the presence of viral particles compatible with Poxvirus belonging to the genus Orthopox, not finding the presence of viruses of the genus Parapox, as well as other viral types producing similar lesions (Herpes, Varicella, Enterovirus, etc)" and "An adult male patient in a hospital has been diagnosed with an infection caused by a virus belonging to the orthopox group. Monkeypox and smallpox viruses are orthopox viruses".

Either it is monkeypox, or it is smallpox eradicated 40 years ago, or it is Vaccinia virus or it is Cowpox. Emanuele676 (talk) 20:58, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not publish original thought. It will become confirmed when it is published by a reliable source that it is confirmed. C messier (talk) 21:10, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

This is not original research; I translated the two sources. Otherwise, yes, in a few days they will find out that it is not the Smallpox eradicated 40 years ago and we will resolve the doubt, no problem. Emanuele676 (talk) 22:11, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

If there is no reliable announcement that they are confirmed we cannot baptise them as confirmed. Until there is such announcement, they remain suspected. C messier (talk) 06:48, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

In the Czech Republic, on the other hand, they say the case is confirmed, yet they say they used electron microscopy and PCR, as did Argentina and Finland. Why two identical cases are put in different places in the table? Emanuele676 (talk) 13:58, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Because the source mentions it is confirmed. The finnish and argentine ones mention they are highly suspected. C messier (talk) 15:22, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Now confirmed with PCR, and described as confirmed by the source [13]. So discussion resolved. MarioGom (talk) 20:21, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Important new source: Monkeypox multi-country outbreak - Risk Assessment by ECDC

Just published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and full of useful information:

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/risk-assessment-monkeypox-multi-country-outbreak.pdf

We should digest it for the article as this is WP:MEDRS. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 16:12, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I've had a look, and since then found this:

https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON385

from the WHO, and I think thats at least as good.

Regards Sean Heron (talk) 10:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Places with over 10 totals

Shouldn't Portugal, Spain, Canada, all have sections, just like the UK does? -- 65.92.247.17 (talk) 21:42, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

@65.92.247.17 it seems like the material question here is if the article should be organized like a timeline, with the sections under "UK" and "other" merged into a single narrative or if the whole article should be broken up by country. Right now, there's not a ton of information for each individual country, aside from the UK. But once that changes, it seems prudent to split this into geographic regions. We can have both, too. Erie Bard (talk) 01:35, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

The original question is one that struck me as well (not necessarily that each country need an own section, but whether the UK having a section is a bit of an imbalance for the article.

I guess as you say, Erie Bard, a timeline would be a common way of organising information. I'll think some more about it, I'm not very happy with the articles structure in general right now... Sean Heron (talk) 18:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

P.S. Could it be that the there is more UK info due to our "go-to" places for info are english language? Eg, I imagine there might be quite a bit on the spanish side of things, but most of that would probably be in Spanish, right? (I found an article beforehand - on some vague website - that had quite some detail on the Spanish cases, I'll link it in a minute). Sean Heron (talk) 18:36, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

While we do have a tendency to focus more on English speaking countries both because of sources and editor interest, I think this is a minor factor at the moment. The reason why the article is at is, is because of what Erie Bard partly addressed. While our article doesn't make this clear, I believe the UK was the first to identify or at least report a case and from what I can tell they also reported their second case before others. The second case was particularly of interest given the lack of any link at the time (and I think still now) either to travel or the index case. So there's been more coverage of the UK and there's more info from the UK, including older info (while this article has been edited a lot it's still likely some older info will remain). You can see the WHO also had two stories on the UK [14] followed by a worldwide one and while yeah that is English too I don't think language is the reason. Nil Einne (talk) 20:51, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey, I'm not sure I'm convinced, but I'll reread and consider with a little more time tomorrow. I did just realise that I said I'd link to article with pretty detailed info on Spanish cases / cluster, and wanted to do that quick (Spanish original I'm afraid...): El Pais: Big Festival in Gran Canaria... Sean Heron (talk) 21:14, 22 May 2022 (UTC) (Btw, I'm happy to admit my comment was a bit off the cuff, and pretty certainly missed some of the picture!)

That article seems to further prove the point. It is from 21 May. The UK's first case was on 6 May. The next two cases with no link to the earlier case or travel history to regions affected was on 12 May, over a week before the Spanish article. Our article has existed in 17 May [15]. Note our article only dealt with the UK at the time but I don't think this was because of an English focus or English source focus. I think at the time the UK was still the only country where cases considered part of this outbreak (i.e. not from areas where cases sometimes crop up) had been publicly reported. This is a rapidly evolving situation so it may be surprising to some, but it's fairly common things happen like that and it's fairly common our articles and the sources have a strong legacy of how the situation evolved. However even I'm wrong and the reason is mostly because of an English source focus and English focus, it's sort of a moot point. Why ever we got here the more important point is it's irrelevant. We definitely need to improve our article, for example it should be clearer when cases were first identified and reported. And we need to consider how to handle subsections, for example should we keep on on the UK, should we have subsections on other countries etc. Whatever the reason we got where we are now, it only has limited relevance to what we should do now which is what should concern us on this talk page. Nil Einne (talk) 12:42, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

@Nil Einne - Ok, sorry if you feel I sidetracked the "real" issues. I think I pretty much 100% agree with your sentiment, on that its more important to think about what to do *now* :) ! (I guess I was just trying to understand how things had shaped up like this - and eg, I didn't realise the article started out as "2022 monkeybox outbreak in the UK".) I guess my experience is often that making bold edits often gets a lot of pushback, so I guess I was thinking out loud about why "deemphasising" the UK in the article might make sense.

Anyway, I had a bit of a reshuffle in mind already, as part of that I'd go for relabelling the UK section as "initial cases", and moving stuff around accordingly - would that make sense to you? Regards Sean Heron (talk) 12:35, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Something I don't understand (genome, number of mutations)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but in this source (which is not one I'd like to lean on, especially not heavily! But it is listed in the article), two of the three genomes discussed have a considerable number of mutations (counting single nucleotide changes, over 30 - about half of these actually leading to different amino acids at those positions). However, in our article (thus, in other sources), talk is of only very few changes. So something is wrong here?

I'll look into this more closely later myself, just thought I'd put it out there quick. Regards, Sean Heron (talk) 14:34, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Use of trackers for statistics

This is something that came up often early in 2020 with COVID-19. Many case trackers are often inaccurate, especially for countries that have no centralized national reporting. In countries like Spain or Germany, where each region's health department publishes reports at different times of the day, or where national reports have a significant lag over regional reports, some of these sources often have problems such as double counting cases. This will probably change at some point. For example, COVID-19 trackers got more accurate over time when most countries set up some form of centralized daily reporting, but we're not there yet with the monkeypox outbreak. So I would suggest avoiding using trackers such as BNO News' for the cases table, and rely on the most reliable sources available for each country. At least for now. Some might find interesting some common reporting errors that we documented back in the day with early COVID-19 case counts: Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19/Case Count Task Force#Common errors. cc Pyruvate MarioGom (talk) 16:20, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Just an update here: blatant errors and lack of corrections have continued today for Spain confirmed and suspected cases in the BNO News' tracker. Their own cited sources (or any other reliable sources) never matched their counts, and they seemed to be double counting many cases in both columns. MarioGom (talk) 20:55, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Some gripes (and bold suggestions)

I have a couple issues with the article I'd like to address, but there are some hurdles to that (mostly the lead being full of references, which makes it a little tricky to edit). So I'll throw out my suggestion and get round to the bold editing later :P (so BRD in reverse if you like :P ).

The lead paragraph doesn't well reflect the current state of knowledge on the outbreak, so I'd like to give it a general overhaul. (Plus, I don't think the list of countries with eg 3, 2, or one case at the end adds a lot of value, especially since we've got that info covered roughly in the infobox, and in detail in the table at the bottom. I'd cut that out immediately, but don't know hom many/ which references are used elsewhere in the article... :/ ).

Anyway this would be my rough suggestion:

The 2022 monkeypox outbreak is an ongoing outbreak of the monkeypox virus, with most cases so far occuring in Europe. The outbreak is unusual compared to previous monkeypox outbreaks in that there is sustained human to human transmission. The CDC currently assumes community transmission - that is unrecognised chains of infections in a certain region - within the UK. There are also media reports of community transmission in Spain.

[general discription of monkeypox here - eg related to smallpox, endemic where, and such]

The first case of the outbreak was reported in the UK on May 4th, in a traveller from Nigeria, with x confirmed, and y suspected cases reported since / as of May 23rd. European countries have reported the majority of cases, with other cases being reported in Canada, Japan, Australia and the US.

(The fact that a majority of cases reported so far have been in men 'that have sex with men' probably belongs in there as well - but see the section above this one for that discussion).

I'll be getting on this this evening (plus the map!). Regards Sean Heron (talk) 12:53, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed that the lead should mention that this is the first known outbreak of monkeypox to occur through sexual networks, specifically those of homosexual men. Will try to take a whack at something as anodyne as possible, given Database's point in the above discussion. Thanks! ElleTheBelle 17:16, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

It is not an outbreak, but a cluster, does not apply to all cases. And we are talking about close contacts MSM, as already written on the page, not "sexual networks of homosexual men." Emanuele676 (talk) 17:26, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Numerous RS characterize this as an "outbreak"—and also use the term "sexual networks". No one is suggesting that "all cases" are a result of MSM contact, just that it's been the primary route of transmission thus far. The WHO itself, in a publication titled "Multi-country monkeypox outbreak in non-endemic countries" states that: "cases have mainly but not exclusively been identified amongst men who have sex with men (MSM)". None of this is the slightest bit controversial from a factual basis—is there any reason to suppress it? ElleTheBelle 19:34, 24 May 2022 (UTC) ElleTheBelle 19:34, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

That didn't go well. I added a single sentence to the lead here:

"The current international outbreak is unprecedented in the developed world, and, unlike the typical transmission of monkeypox in Africa through contact with wildlife, appears to have spread primarily through sexual networks, specifically by men who have sex with men (MSM)."

Only to find it almost immediately reverted here by Alexbrn. The claim was that my edit involved:

• "unreliable sourcing"—are the AP and CNBC no longer considered RS?
• WP:LEDEBOMB", an essay by the very same Alexbrn, which asserts that material not in the article shouldn't be added to the lead, despite the entire section "Transmission changes" which is all about MSM transmission.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks! ElleTheBelle 18:23, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

As said above, for medical related articles, WP:MEDRS is more explicit policy. A09090091 (talk) 19:12, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I've still not gone for an attempt at updating the lead, so I think I'd personally want to go for more general changes first (then perhaps rework the article itself - and then see how and where exactly the MSM transmission fits in.

I think what makes the whole thing difficult is that the current state of information on the outbreak is still very much in flux, making it hard to tell what the "current assesment" looks like :/ . (As an example, the largest german public / state media outlet - "Tagesschau" - ran an article yesterday, in which men that have sex with men were not even mentioned).

My personal view is that the MSM angle could well be a bit of a red herring (and mostly down to the first clusters). But it has been reported a lot - and is pointed out by both the WHO and ECDC, so definitely needs to be in the article (Whether it goes in the lead or not is more arguable I think...). Sean Heron (talk) 20:22, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

P.S. This is probably clear, but WHO is certainly seen as a reliable source for medical articles / under WP:MEDPS also, right? Sean Heron (talk) 20:24, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, and the second paragraph of the ECDC publication to which you linked makes it abundantly clear:

"Monkeypox (MPX) does not spread easily between people… The predominance, in the current outbreak, of diagnosed human MPX cases among men having sex with men (MSM), and the nature of the presenting lesions in some cases, suggest transmission occurred during sexual intercourse."

The document continues to warn, at length, about the obvious risks of upcoming Gay Pride events and other seasonal gatherings of MSM which typically involve extensive multi-partner sexual liaisons. This seems to me to be critical information: while not meeting the medical definition of an "STI" (spread through semen, etc.), for the first time, monkeypox is spreading through the developed world by becoming a sexually transmitted infection. ElleTheBelle 20:53, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

It was actually someone else that linked to the ECDC article :P. Anyhow, like I said, important info yes, in the lead - I dont know, and personally I'm indifferent, so guess you'd need to argue with / address other people :P. Regards Sean Heron (talk) 21:05, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Article structure moving forward

First just quick I'd like to say I think the article is shaping up quite nicely, so a big thank you to everyone out there that has been doing stuff and putting time into this :) !

I see some things where I think we'll need to take action sooner or later (not sure if now yet), so wanted to put them up for discussion. One is that the "Multi-country outbreak" section is going to get longer and longer over time (if we keep adding info), so that will need to be broken out into a Timeline of the 2022 monkeypox outbreak article sometime, I reckon.

Sidenote on that - I noticed yesterday that there is information being jotted down in the daily Current events (under the "Health and environment" section), that we don't (yet) have listed here, eg that Germany placed a vaccine order yesterday. (Just as a "heads up").

Finally, I think the sections as ordered now have a logical flow which is good in general (and encylopedic I guess?), but especially with the more indepth info on (probably ongoing?) transmission in Nigeria (not read in detail yet, but seems a welcome addition), it also means all the more current information is rather far down on the page - which also seems kinda counter-intuitive to me. Dunno what/whether to do something on that yet...

Anyhow, Regards Sean Heron (talk) 05:42, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

558 cases in Nigeria in 5 years: confirmed or suspected?

The source says 558 cases in the title, and this is what supports the statement in the wikipedia article:

"In a report released on May 9, 2022, the NCDC reported about 558 cases across 32 states and the Federal Capital Territory between 2017 and 2022."

However, no further mention of 558 is made in the source. Instead, we see a mention of 525 suspected cases, of which 230 were confirmed:

"The disease body further noted that from September 2017 to February, 2022, a total of 525 suspected cases had been reported from 32 states in the country. Out of these reported cases, NCDC said a total of 230, representing 43.8 per cent, had been confirmed in 20 states and the FCT. It noted that Rivers State topped the list with 52 cases, followed by Bayelsa and Lagos States with 43 and 31 cases respectively." -- 147.156.104.19 (talk) 05:59, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Good point. We should go for the confirmed cases I think. Will do that! (after checking quick myself). Sean Heron (talk) 06:05, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Vaccine purchases

I'm wanting to add some info on vaccine purchases (eg Germany announced buying yesterday), but wasn't happy with adding it under "responses" (feels more like general policy stance goes there), or under the "Multi-country outbreak" (as the focus there is on cases being confirmed - maybe I just don't want to clutter it more).

So I'm thinking I'd add a section (at the bottom of the article) on vaccine purchases, that would have the extra benefit of adding some room to give a little context (eg there's not that much available immediately :/ ). Think it'll warrant an addition to the lead as well though (since buying vaccines reflects a worry by governments that this isn't going to be over tomorrow). Just as a heads up :) . Sean Heron (talk) 07:08, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

volunteer for research

i am a second language speaker of Spanish. As someone who learned quite a bit of spanish in school, i would like to volunteer if you would like to read sources from Spain and Latin America. I am at an intermediate level and have little problems reading news sources. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:4CF8:F0AF:1223:8E93 (talk) 05:45, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer :). I'll take you up on it, and ask if you can find + describe some sources regarding "community transmission" in Madrid (which is mentioned eg here - https://elpais.com/sociedad/2022-05-21/una-fiesta-multitudinaria-en-gran-canaria-segundo-gran-foco-del-brote-de-la-viruela-del-mono-en-espana.html , but has not seen much international / english language coverage as far as I can tell).

Community transmission meaning, basically, cases going undetected over a period of time within a certain region (so, with unclear /unknown chains of transmission).

That would be cool, I think that's (still) lacking from this article! Regards Sean Heron (talk) 06:37, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Hey again - just wanted to point out that MarioGom has probably collected most of that info / relevant links up in the section: Talk:2022_monkeypox_outbreak#I_have_heard_something_on_a_news_site

We've not completley resolved the question of "community transmission" (though I think its pretty clear there is - just a question of sources really), but that should't be much trouble either. Thanks anyway! (and of course, maybe someone else might have a request). Sean Heron (talk) 12:04, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I have heard something on a news site

according to some news site, the Spanish outbreak may be linked to a hot tub. I couldn’t positively confirm it, but we should look into it. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:8C31:1767:58EA:51F7 (talk) 07:47, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, there are two major transmission hubs being investigated in Spain: an adult sauna in Madrid (Sauna Paraíso), and a festival in the Canary Islands (Maspalomas Pride). MarioGom (talk) 08:59, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Answering to first point - yeah, I've wanted to adapt and expand the article to more accurately reflect current knowledge of the outbreak, but that's not always easy :P (and I was shorter on time yesterday than I thought I'd be).
Here is an english language source that refers to the festival on the Canary Islands (it quotes El-Pais, probably the article I linked to earlier). Sean Heron (talk) 10:22, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

It seems for now the link to Maspalomas Pride is only suspected, not confirmed. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 12:15, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@Fernando Trebien, any sources for that? The El Pais article I was referring to didn't sound like "suspected" to me (but maybe I misread it - and I'm relying on a machine translation, so that's not ideal anyway). Regards, Sean Heron (talk) 12:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@Sean Heron: Deutsche Welle reported the same day that these cases are being investigated. This is also the tone used by El Pais: Los servicios de salud pública del Gobierno de Canarias investigan ahora la relación entre estos casos y si se produjeron más contagios durante los 10 días de festejos, entre ellos el de un caso sospechoso detectado en Tenerife. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 14:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be preferable to find an institutional source, perhaps from the country itself.... Emanuele676 (talk) 14:38, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

It may take a while. At the national level, one of the peculiarities of the study of close contacts is the difficulty of traceability, since a significant number of people cannot be located because the subjects do not know their identity, or because they do not want to identify them. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 14:43, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The degree to which these places and events are linked to the outbreak is still under investigation. But the fact that these are the primary places and events under this kind of investigation in Spain is beyond doubt. Here's some sources. Please, consider the date of each of them, since available information changes very quickly. Title and quotes translations are mine:

• "Sanidad investiga un evento gay de Canarias como el segundo foco de la viruela del mono" [Health [department] investigates a gay event from Canarias as the second focal point of monkeypox]. El Faro de Vigo (in Spanish). 22 May 2022. Sanidad manifestó a "La Provincia" que "de los dos casos detectados en Canarias sólo uno tiene vínculo con la fiesta celebrada en el sur de la isla de Gran Canaria. Es posible que el evento haya contribuido a la transmisión del virus, pero aún es pronto para saber el peso con el que haya podido contribuir a la difusión". [The Health Department told "La Provincia" that "out of 2 cases detected in the Canary Islands, only one is linked to the festival celebrated in the south of the Gran Canaria island. It is possible that this event contributed to the virus transmission, but it is early to know how much weight it could have had when contributing to transmission."]
• "Madrid estudia si hay vínculo entre los casos de viruela del mono de la capital y Canarias" [Madrid studies if there is a link between monkeypox cases in the capital and the Canary Islands]. RTVE (in Spanish). 22 May 2022.
• "Cuatro de los siete casos de Canarias estuvieron en el Gay Pride de Maspalomas" [Four out of seven cases in the Canary Islands attended Maspalomas Gay Pride]. EFE (in Spanish). 23 May 2022.

So it seems a significant number of cases in the region could be linked to the Maspalomas event, and health authorities are investigating it. I wouldn't say there's anything extremely conclusive yet, but the ongoing investigation seems to be due and widely reported by reliable sources. MarioGom (talk) 07:20, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

At the moment, the best we can do is describe what the sources are saying without jumping to conclusions, so we can write things like "health authorities in Spain investigate ..." or "suspect...". Some of the reported cases appear unconnected, particularly the first case reported in the UK which preceded the Maspalomas Pride. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 10:58, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the extensive description and sourcing Mario ! I'm not going to wade into this today yet, but cool to have it collected!

Fernando (I hope you two are fine with first names :P) - I totally agree, and your point on the first reported UK case being unrelated to at least the Spanish cluster(s) is one I came to elsewhere on this talk page (somewhat surprised then that no media had caught onto the fact yet... :/ ).

Finally, mostly at you Mario - I'm sorry, I could have made this clearer earlier, but - things got in the way :P . I think I have two different points regarding the Spanish clusters / situation (that are missing atm from the article):

• One is describing the "suspected" cluster(s).
• The other, and I guess I'm trying to stress this is separate, is statements by government/health officials that there is "community transmission".

I think we ran into a bit of a language barrier on that last point (I'd asked about that in a section that has been archived since): Just taken literally, of course there is "transmission in the eg Madrid community" - you (Mario) pointed that out to me, and yes that is quite obvious and well sourced (sorry again for not responding to you back then). But "community transmission" is a technical term in epidemiology with a very specific meaning: That there are infections happening that are not being reported, basically, and so you have chains of infections that you can not link together.

Perhaps a comparison to make it more clear: in Europe in early 2020, intially we had imported cases from Wuhan, some of which went on to infect people here - thus we had chains of infections! - but the assumption was that every case was being found, or chains were dying off by themselves. Then of course we had "community transmission" in Bergamo (ie people getting infected without anyone noticing), and from there we ended up with community transmission in the whole of Europe (and pretty much worldwide, unfortunately).

I hope I've made clear the difference and why I think both (separately) are important to have in the article (- if verifiable of course :P ). Sorry for the length, and best regards! Sean Heron (talk) 12:00, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

With respect to community transmission, some sources have started talking about it since Monday, but there doesn't seem to be consensus. I'll try to post a summary of sources later. MarioGom (talk) 12:34, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Not much that I could find, really. News from authorities last week saying that there was no community transmission. Some casual comment yesterday saying that there's community transmission. I'll update if there's some reliable update to this. MarioGom (talk) 16:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

References

regarding El pais and community transmission

regarding community transmission El Pais seems to think that localized community transmission is possible and likely happening according to some Public health departments and one spokesman it seems, but is unable to positive confirm that. it suggests it may have been brought from the Canary islands to Madrid earlier, which would imply their are undetected cases, spreading it.

i would like to double check, by running it thru machine translation just in case, since it is my second language and i am less confident. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:B0E2:C74A:B29C:4F9B (talk) 21:42, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Global WHO conspiracy : Povid 2022

There are a lot of critical theories who guess, that apepox is the sucessor to the Covid-thing. I think we should cover this. I mean the critic of the WHO and their Global health Lovemankind83 (talk) 23:44, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Data and chart?

In watching the numbers go up day-by-day in the 2022_monkeypox_outbreak#Cases_per_country table, is it time for a data source / storage for daily counts (both per country and total) and accompanying charts as were constructed early on for COVID19 (e.g. the cumulative cases chart at COVID-19#Case_fatality_rate or Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data/United_States_medical_cases_chart)?

If not, how high do the numbers need to go or up for how many consecutive days before it becomes "worth it"? Tantek (talk) 22:12, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I would say that once reliable sources start doing this kind of chart too. It seems they aren't doing it yet, and I'm not sure we have enough quality data right now to maintain such charts correctly. But I think we should do it at some point. MarioGom (talk) 09:10, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

As a step towards that, but not waiting for other sources to do charts themselves, we could take the "Confirmed cases" count from revisions of this page (since those are presumably from reliable sources themselves), last revision each day, and at least chart that, e.g. starting from

• last edit on day of page creation (17 May) of 7 cases, then
• last edit the next day (18 May) of 9 cases

Etc.

We have a week of such data which is already up to 216 confirmed cases (revision as of this comment). A chart of even those numbers would help show visually whether the numbers are hockey-sticking or leveling off.

If/when an external reliable source for daily counts is found, we can update any data tables / charts to use those numbers directly instead. Tantek (talk) 21:51, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Update: Someone has made charts here: https://www.monkeypoxmeter.com/ which seem to correspond roughly to data on this page. Couldn’t find their data sources. Tantek (talk) 22:28, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I stumbled over a chart by OurWorldInData yesterday - looks pretty reliable, and was thinking it would make for a good addition to the article (even if a lot of the increasing case count atm is likely due to health personal on a greater lookout for the ilness). So my take is by all means, go ahead :) ! Sean Heron (talk) 05:21, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

There's been occasional bad updates here and there (e.g. errors in sources that were later corrected), so please, don't just rely on revision history without checking sources. That being said, now that OurWorldInData is also up to it, I think it's fair we get this started too. MarioGom (talk) 07:03, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I found another data set by global.health with a spreadsheet and a map. Don't know, if this is a reliable source, though. --ElLutzo (talk) 03:06, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

if we are going to discuss conspiracies

we have several options, the american bioweapon theory, spread by russian and chinese trolls, that one seems to be very active. and the vaccine is somehow causing it, because chickenpox have been reported. I second the conspiracy section a user suggested. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:E5B6:FD96:5AA6:98AA (talk) 04:29, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I can understand the sentiment, and sure its relevant to some degree, but

a) its not surprising in the least

b) what's happening eg on twitter doesn't get reflected here. What gets reflected here is reporting by reliable sources (ie big news agencies and newspapers, also providers of medical information, eg WHO, various CDCs). (So if there was widespread reporting in the media, then sure, we'd probably want to have something on that).

Sorry ! Sean Heron (talk) 06:22, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Unless there is significant coverage in reliable sources about it, no. See WP:V and WP:DUE. MarioGom (talk) 07:26, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

We can have a section on Misinformation (like COVID-19 does), maybe under Society and culture, but just like MarioGom, I think it should only cover the most notable cases, particularly the recurring theories or those that had a more negative impact. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 12:23, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Africa

Hello, I have recently added information about Monkeypox cases in Nigeria. I think that we should at least include information from African countries, because these countries are also affected by Monkeypox and we have to remember that #AfricanLivesMatter too. For example, in the Spanish Wikipedia, editors added information about cases in Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, since they have had confirmed cases this year. Tbh, I didn't expect that an editor would completely remove the section I added without first establishing consent (Note: The text I added can still be seen using the code editor). So I propose to set consensus to be informed and show which is the best option.

• Option 1 - Completely add all the content of the Nigeria section
• Option 2 - Add only certain parts of the section, keeping only the most important data, details that are not so important can go in other articles (Note: If you choose this option please specify which data should go in the article and which should not).
• Option 3 - Remove all information from Nigeria section

Pinging @Yadsalohcin:, @Sean Heron:, @Emanuele676:, @Ftrebien: and @DeVos Max: as they were the main contributors to the article.-Seb { 💬 Talk + 📝 Edits } 00:33, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

This is the page on the 2022 outbreak; the general page on the disease is this. I just hid the information because it could be transferred to the appropriate page. Emanuele676 (talk) 00:51, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I know, but I added information because it would mainly give reader the context of how the cases originated in Nigeria, note which cases of Monkeypox have been imported from this country, and understand how the disease has impacted over the years, note that for example, the table of cases in Nigeria has information going back to February 2022. I understand your point, but it would be better to discuss it among several editors to know if it is appropriate to place this section, I agree that some of the information can be reduced by adding only the most important data.Seb { 💬 Talk + 📝 Edits } 01:03, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Bit short on time just now, but my feelings pretty stongly follow Seb's here (Thank you for taking the time to discuss this here in a calm way!).

I almost reverted your "hiding" the section yesterday Emanuele, but I didn't want to start an edit war (and thought it made more sense to discuss here first).

I do agree that this is not the best "home" for this information (and actually, I made a call on the Monkeypox article saying it'd be good to build it into that article.

I do think it is highly relevant to this outbreak, since this seems to be where the change in transmission dynamics happened (ie from animal to human spillover to human to human transmission). If you're worried about all the "old info" at the top of the article, I partly agree - and did point out further up that the structure / flow of the article might want changing, so maybe that's an approach that could be taken that'd see us all happy, Emanuele ?

Regards Sean Heron (talk) 06:16, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I think the information you added is valuable, I would suggest the following actions on the original content of 2022 monkeypox outbreak § Monkeypox cases in Nigeria:

• Move/integrate the table and the first paragraph to Monkeypox § Epidemiology, because this is background information that is not so closely related to the subject of the current outbreak (I'm actually not very sure about the table, but it seems like a lot of information just to demonstrate that there was indeed a drop in statistics due to the pandemic)
• Restore the second paragraph under 2022 monkeypox outbreak § Outbreak characteristics, merging it with the current last paragraph on Nigeria, because this is indeed very relevant for the subject of the outbreak

--Fernando Trebien (talk) 12:18, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

In fact, someone else had already done most of this, so I just did a bit of cleanup. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 17:34, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

social aspects section

that section is a little light and if we are looking online about the criticism over using images from africa, unfortunately that turns into the whole conspiracy that the west is behind it.

I think we should either make it longer, merge it with a misinformation section or find somewhere else to put it, It is only a couple sentences and doesn’t seem to work on its own. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:24BB:E832:6B1A:C568 (talk) 05:32, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Map shading

Argentina and Finland have now been confirmed for the purposes of map shading. Uhooep (talk) 07:14, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Btw, Ecuador, Bolivia have suspected cases they should also be added 73.126.133.15 (talk) 22:24, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Case Table by countries

Suspected and confirmed cases should be separated and countries with suspected cases but no confirmed cases should be in a separate table and not counted in the number of countries to make it less confusing. 111.65.63.131 (talk) 22:32, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Without giving it much thought - I'm thinking noting suspected cases is perhaps less relevant now than it was earlier in the outbreak. So I gues we could consider dropping them going forwards?

Also, just rooting round the COVID-19 pandemic pages for inspiration / guidance (not that I'm convinced that we're heading in that direction, but the overall picture remains rather unclear to me :/ ). Anyhow, saw this: https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_cases_in_January_2020 thought it'd make for a good addition / way to present the data? Sean Heron (talk) 12:14, 27 May 2022 (UTC) P.S. I guess I'm not expecting a no, and probably should just get started on it... there's just so much I'd still like to do :( ..

P.P.S. To save people hopping over to that page: it's basically a table giving a day by day breakdown of how many confirmed cases in which countries (timeline horizontal, countries vertical). Regards Sean Heron (talk) 12:22, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Well, yes, effectively virtually no national authority publishes data on suspected cases, so over time they will disappear, except for the first cases in a country that are suspected until confirmed. Emanuele676 (talk) 12:53, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I didn't make myself very clear - I meant not bothering listing suspected cases in the global countries table at all anymore (and instead, for "new" countries, just waiting the extra day or three till they're confirmd - or not). See the Covid table for how this could look. Sean Heron (talk) 15:54, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Personally, I would find the table more useful without suspected cases and showing the number of confirmed cases per month, to simplify things. That way, it would be evident whether the outbreak is accelerating or dying off. I didn't want to object to the guys who were willing to keep Omicron's stats detailed and up to date, but on Wikipedia we generally prefer consolidated information over rapidly changing information. So, especially if the situation now seems less out of control, it makes sense to me to leave out the suspected cases. These tend to be quickly confirmed or dismissed within a few days. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 13:11, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I think suspected is still relevant, say for example in countries without widespread access to testing or PCR. Their suspected but not PCR confirmed might still be useful for monitoring purposes. Uhooep (talk) 13:31, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

For example Pakistan has a suspected case but this article says that the country has no diagnostic facility to detect monkeypox. Uhooep (talk) 17:01, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

regarding misinformation

I saw a newspaper article online from CNN stating that Chinese and Russian trolls and bot farms were spreading the conspiracy theories I mentioned. 2600:1702:9F0:D140:24BB:E832:6B1A:C568 (talk) 05:28, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Please, include URLs to sources when discussing them. MarioGom (talk) 20:24, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

error noticed

the twin towers occured on 9/11/2001, not 2011. I am unable to fix that 2600:1702:9F0:D140:1DD8:936F:5468:CFD5 (talk) 05:57, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

It seems to be already fixed. MarioGom (talk) 10:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Nonpharmaceutical intervention

The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene had an article on monkeypox in a magazine about using non-pharmaceutical intervention to combat Covid-19. The article about monkeypox says there are two films titled "Understanding Monkeypox" and "Monkeypox Testimonies" were produced. These films targeted a broad spectrum of monkeypox-related issues; modes of virus transmission, identification of monkeypox, disease consequences, prevention, and the need to seek care.

https://www.ajtmh.org/view/journals/tpmd/105/4/article-p879.xml

Sorry if this wasn't helpful (feel free to delete it if it's a bother). I hope you are all safe and well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.183.9.36 (talk • contribs) 22:44, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Endemic countries

I have been researching about Monkeypox cases in endemic African countries, and I was wondering if there is a possibility that we can place them in a separate table. I have created a table with basic information about each of the cases in 4 endemic countries in my sandbox. The endemic countries that have reported cases in 2022 according to WHO are Nigeria, Cameroon, Centrafrique and DR Congo.

• Reasons for placing this information in the table
  • Much of the Nigerian population uses wikipedia in English to obtain information and much of it is looking for information about monkeypox since it started when a person traveled from Nigeria to the UK. In addition, the WHO has alerted Nigeria about Monkeypox recently, so this would be one of the reasons why I preferred to put the information about the Nigerian cases in a table, since May 2022 there are a lot of news from Nigerian media about Monkeypox and new cases registered in the country. (Google News)
  • The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has alerted several members of the African Union including Cameroon about the monkeypox outbreak in 2022. (Source) In addition, Cameroon's border areas with Nigeria have reported cases of monkeypox since December 2021. (Source) (Map showing affected regions in Cameroon)
  • By including the information in the table, the reader can be given context on how African countries have applied measures to control monkeypox outbreaks and compare them with those used in Western countries.

• Reasons for not placing the information in the article
  • The table in my sandbox includes Centrafrique and DR Congo, in which the strain is from Central Africa. The 2022 outbreak is West African strain, this strain is more severe and lethal, so it may confuse some people.
  • It would be difficult to find additional information in countries such as DR Congo, because Congo newspapers are not very well positioned in the CEO of search engines such as Google, plus there is not much information in English and much of it is in French, so it would be a problem when adding content. So it would be a problem when updating the tables, although the WHO usually publishes weekly reports on the spread of various diseases in all countries. However, it should be noted that contact tracing in Central African countries is very limited according to the Cameroon epidemiologist, Yap Boum. (Source)

Additional information The Spanish version of the wikipedia article includes cases of monkeypox in African countries. This was discussed on the talk page, in which editor Vespio wrote "I was reading the English article they are relying on and there are some discrepancies with our Spanish article, the English does not add the Republic of Congo as part of the current outbreak, as the Spanish does. I also believe that those cases and deaths should not be included, as they do not seem to be part of the current outbreak that is happening, otherwise it would have been added in the English article as well", in which another editor named Kirchhoff responded "And the references to reliable sources, what do they say about it? I would say that if the outbreak includes the DR Congo cases it is because someone has read about it in the reliable sources reporting on the subject; if they do not include it, it is because it does not appear in the sources, no? (4) (5) (6) (7)... we should go to the sources and thus build an encyclopedia. And now that I have already launched the pullita (it is not personal, it is in general and precisely that someone raises it encourages me to think that this has a solution); I comment on this: I think they do not include it because, following one of the few serious references in our article: WHO, it says "cases of monkeypox in non-endemic countries reported to WHO between 13 and 21 May 2022 at 13:00" and separates them from the endemic ones: that is why they do not have in the table neither Cameroon, Central African Republic, DR Congo nor Nigeria. Unfortunately those countries are not suffering an outbreak of anything, they have been holding on for years and the rest of the world did not care about that disease until it arrived at "our doors" (this is already foreo on my part, sorry). Any option taken should be based on reliable sources: if they consider that it is an outbreak because it has left the endemic areas then they should withdraw; if it is not so and the consideration of outbreak we would have had in any case, then they should be maintained. But in any case what the references say, and if they are academic even better".
So I propose three alternatives, one of these is to include all the content of the table of endemic countries to the article, another alternative would be to include only Cameroon and Nigeria since they are the two countries that have presented cases of the West African strain, and lastly, to include the information in other pages. I am unsure about this and want to establish consensus first in order to know what is the best alternative.-Seb { 💬 Talk + 📝 Edits } 16:45, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I would say this is information that should be included here Monkeypox#Epidemiology, as Polio#Epidemiology. I believe that WHO has data for all endemic countries, although perhaps out of date. Emanuele676 (talk) 22:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I would tend to disagree with you Emanuele - but I guess both your and my opinion are based on how we probably percieve this outbreak. My feeling is that - given the ongoing nature of the 2018 Nigerian Outbreak - there was a change in the nature of transmission there already, and what's been happening in Europe since Spring reflects that change more than anything else. In that view, the "European" outbreak, and the one in Nigeria are effectively the same one.

Admittedly, there are no hard facts to back that up as of now (at least not reported yet). I'm thinking there will be more clarity on the question shortly though (sequencing of those cases with a direct travel history from Nigeria, and comparison of those sequences with those from "european community transmission" should show whether they are near identical or not).

I guess my tendency would be postpone the issue a week or so. (but if it wasn't clear, my tendency in general is to include here. We'd need to put some thought into how we want to present the data and the relations though...) Sean Heron (talk) 10:37, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

PS - regarding the issue of the Central African strain - I think we should only refer and present information on the West African clade/strain anyway, makes for easier understanding, and the Central African strain is not really of relevance to this outbreak (as far as I can tell). Sean Heron (talk) 10:39, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

The definition of an outbreak is when cases increase relative to the average. It seems to me that in Nigeria the cases have not increased and have remained average, that is, there the disease is endemic, there is no outbreak. But as I said, the data is fine in the disease epidemiology section. Emanuele676 (talk) 00:44, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Timeline article?

As per a suggestion by Sean Heron, should we spin out the 2022_monkeypox_outbreak#Multi-country_outbreak section into a Timeline of the 2022 monkeypox outbreak (or rather spin out the version before I started hacking it down, so start with what's at [16])? Bondegezou (talk) 17:12, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree we should have a timeline of countries an other events. 73.126.133.15 (talk) 20:16, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I have spun out a timeline article as suggested and chopped down material here. I realise I've made a bunch of WP:BOLD edits re-organising the article lately. I hope this has helped produce a better structure and reduce repetition, but, anyone, revert me as you see fit! Bondegezou (talk) 06:34, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

"At least 31 hospitalised"

We have had "At least 31 hospitalised" for a long while now. While it can be tecnically true, no matter the number of hospitalizations, I wonder: is this information useful at this stage? If taken at face value, it seems to imply that while the number of confirmed cases keeps doubling ~weekly, the hospitalized cases remains constant. (Of course, if this is actually confirmed it is actually crucial information). -- 147.156.224.245 (talk) 14:57, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree that we should remove it. It is very outdated, vague and unsourced. Chances are that many of these 31 people have recovered and a lot more have been recently hospitalised. We could add the figure back if a news source publishes an official figure at some stage. Maybe we could leave it as "unknown" for now? I'll wait to see what other editors say before removing it. Rhetoricalnoodle (talk) 15:20, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I would remove it from the infobox, no need to add unknown. This old figure might still be relevant, if sourced, at Timeline of the 2022 monkeypox outbreak. MarioGom (talk) 18:47, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I’ve just removed it because nobody has supported keeping it. Maybe there‘ll be an official figure sometime in the future. Rhetoricalnoodle (talk) 17:35, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Should drafts begin for “2022 monkeypox outbreak in (country)”

Currently, every country with a confirmed or suspected case has a redirect set to this article in the form of “2022 monkeypox outbreak in (country)” or “2022 monkeypox outbreak in the (country)”. These were set to be redirects for potential future articles similarly to how the COVID-19 pandemic article chain system is set up by country. If anyone would like to start a draft of the outbreak for a specific country, feel free to do so. A full list of every redirect and related article/category/drafts will be listed on the Monkeypox outbreak task force page. Elijahandskip (talk) 06:33, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

• I'm working on a draft for the UK article! Chaotic Enby (talk) 18:16, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Ghana & Brazil to be shaded

I believe this is considered a non-endemic country. Also Brazil now has its first case. Uhooep (talk) 18:19, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done. MarioGom (talk) 18:47, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Map

Latvia needs shading on the map. Uhooep (talk) 14:05, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Also some countries with discarded cases should be un-shaded. MarioGom (talk) 14:19, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

India, unless it has been discarded, should be shaded too, right? 147.156.104.5 (talk) 15:33, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Actually a lot of countries need to be shaded/un-shaded. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 15:39, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Right. I'm updating it. MarioGom (talk) 17:53, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Let me know if I missed an update or there was any mistake. MarioGom (talk) 18:18, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Kosovo is needed shading 73.126.133.15 (talk) 23:52, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Right. I marked it in the source code and still for some reason it's not highlighted. I'll look into it. MarioGom (talk) 07:45, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

 Done. MarioGom (talk) 08:01, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the the 'Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic' controlled area should be un-shaded. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 12:29, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Zeeshan Y Tariq:  Done, since it's likely figures in SADR-controlled territory are reported independently. I guess we can revisit this if there is any case there. MarioGom (talk) 13:02, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Colombia and India need to be un-shaded, and the Bahamas needs to shaded as suspected. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 02:55, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Done. MarioGom (talk) 09:45, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Should we add a timeline of first confirmed case by country/territory?

The COVID-19 epidemiology section (later article) quickly had a timeline of first case by country, looking like this. On the one hand, it is a pretty good way to show the spread of the outbreak to new countries, but, on the other hand, it might clutter the article and look redundant with the - for now quite manageable - main epidemiology table. What are your opinions on this? Chaotic Enby (talk) 17:11, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Oppose for now, the current table that is on this page works for this purpose well enough. -184.56.75.144 (talk) 20:40, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I disagree, and I've stated earlier I think it would be good to have a visualisation of change over time, rather than just presentening the "now" data. My preference is still for something more along the lines of this - but @User:Chaotic Enby, I'd say if you want to go for this, do whatever scratches your itch!

Regards Sean Heron (talk) 21:24, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

PS - if you are all too concerned about cluttering, you could always put it on the Timeline article that has already been started - though I'm not sure I'd want that information "buried" like that (perhaps that's why I view/ed the "hybrid" table I was pointing at as a good next step - includes both the information on when first case was confirmed, as well as how many cases). Sean Heron (talk) 21:29, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I think we could move this to a template, formatting it as a narrower and cleaner vertical timeline that can be used as a right sidebar at Timeline of the 2022 monkeypox outbreak and maybe 2022 monkeypox outbreak § Multi-country outbreak. MarioGom (talk) 08:40, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Hot off the press

Well actually, its a pre-print, but you know, whatever :).

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1700947/v1

This is the one source of information I've found so far that gives a most rounded picture of the outbreak as a whole. For people with a more casual understanding of biology, the main points are listed here: https://twitter.com/borges__vitor/status/1531701405484036098 . (I can give a more detailed - but non-technical - account of the paper if anyone is interested / would like me to).

(I'm guessing referencing a pre-print is a no-go though. Still, a lot of the information - minus the discussion of the amount of sequence divergence / possible adaptational evolution - is available otherwise, or reflected to an extent in our article here already.)

Regards Sean Heron (talk) 22:34, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

OK, here's something far more detailed, as well as far better regarding use by us / reliability:

https://www.science.org/content/article/monkeypox-outbreak-questions-intensify-cases-soar -> pointed out by @Chillabit, kudos for that! Sean Heron (talk) 09:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

PS - sad fact: The article is almost two weeks old, but I've not seen that knowledge reflected in the reporting I've read since, nor - at least not very clearly - in our article here :( .

When are we going to switch from ‘Outbreak’ to ‘Epidemic’?

^ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:3D09:1F80:CA00:E59B:CEC1:C1E:A025 (talk) 00:50, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

When it will be declared an epidemic disease. Emanuele676 (talk) 04:08, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

When WHO will say that it has now become an epidemic. WHO still says its an oubreak. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 04:53, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Change template countries

Why are templates constantly being changed? Besides, I would rather have the full name, easier to figure out what country it is, instead of going to remember the acronym for each country. --Emanuele676 (talk) 15:28, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion on which template forms to use. I think {{flag|Spain}} is a good balance between source code readability and conciseness. In any case, I would advise everyone to not change them without discussion, since it's disruptive. Using templates with full country names was a pretty stable version during this week. CC FromCzech. MarioGom (talk) 18:50, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I had no idea there was already some changes, so sorry if there is a problem. But at least the second table ("Timeline of first confirmed cases by country or territory") does not need full names at all, because it will be unlikely edited inside, only additional lines will be added. And the first table contained real overkills ({{flagu|Ireland|name=[[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]]}}, so {{IRL}} or {{flag|Ireland}} is an improvement. FromCzech (talk) 19:05, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

It was changed in this edit. From Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking § What generally should not be linked and Wikipedia:WikiProject Flag Template § Template:Flagu, I think they should not be linked, so we should use {{flagu}} instead of the current flag template shorthands (or create a set of unlinked shorthands and use them). Not a strong argument, but for several months, a similar table at SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant § Statistics remained unlinked, highly edited and, I believe, viewed quite often (at least that article had a lot of views). --Fernando Trebien (talk) 19:18, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I started an RfC at Category talk:Flag template shorthands § RfC on overlinking. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 20:21, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree we should have full names, rather than abbreviations. We probably don’t need quite so many links. What we definitely don’t need is this sea of flags. MOS:FLAG allows flag icons in some situations, but discourages their use. I think the current situation looks very messy. I propose dropping all the flag template stuff and just going with simple country names. Bondegezou (talk) 05:55, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Flags speed up orientation. COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory also uses them. FromCzech (talk) 06:27, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

The Manual of Style is a consensus document worked out by the editing community. It takes a different position. As per WP:ICON, one reader's harmless decoration may be another reader's distraction and When icons are added excessively, they clutter the page and become redundant [..] Pages with excessive icons can also cause loading problems for some people.

As for what another article did, as per MOS:FLAG, Consistency is not paramount.

Their use in the final table, where several countries can be listed in a row, is particularly confusing to my eyes. Bondegezou (talk) 08:54, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't oppose it if it is a popular thing, but I never look at flags when reading country name lists or tables, and I think the technical issues are a good point. Many of the flags look very similar to each other, especially at such a small size, and the chance of confusion is greater the more flags there are in the same list. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 12:45, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

References

Costa Rica and Iran

Hi. I have noticed that Costa Rica and Iran are excluded from the "Cases per country and territory (outside of endemic African countries)" table; while they are present in the "Timeline of suspected monkeypox cases by country or territory" table. Aminabzz (talk) 08:55, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Hello, I´m the person who created the ¨Timeline table¨. Because it´s a timeline we have to leave it and put (discarded on ¨date:¨). 73.126.133.15 (talk) 15:21, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

They later ruled out those cases.

Thank you for your concern. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 15:23, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Thailand Data Removed Somehow

I think someone removed Thailand’s data Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 03:57, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Are we sure that the removed Thailand case is counted as Australian? https://www.thaipbsworld.com/thailand-reports-first-case-of-monkeypox-in-transit-passenger-to-australia/ Emanuele676 (talk) 17:37, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't know. But it's probably Australian. As he only stayed in Thailand for 2 hours in transit at airport. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 15:26, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I think we should put Thailand back? 73.126.133.15 (talk) 15:27, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't think so. It was a passenger in transit to Australia. I think it's not being counted as a case in Thailand in official statistics. MarioGom (talk) 14:21, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Changes made to the table

Why is the table no longer sortable by date and has the wikilink to countries been removed? --Emanuele676 (talk) 19:21, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I noticed now that if I logout the table is sortable, what does it depend on? Emanuele676 (talk) 19:36, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Are you on mobile? It might depend on skin, preferences, gadgets, or user scripts. MarioGom (talk) 20:31, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

No, I am from a desktop computer. I don't understand the usefulness of the change, especially the hyphen in the bottom right corner which is completely unnecessary and also wrong, that field doesn't exist, it shouldn't contain anything. Emanuele676 (talk) 20:42, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

It works for me on desktop on Chrome and Firefox. Table sorting does not work on mobile (Help:Sorting). --Fernando Trebien (talk) 21:14, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I made some changes to follow the accessibility guidelines and avoid overlinking (the manual of style specifically mentions country names as something to avoid linking to), resulting in a table structure much like SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant § Statistics and SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant § Statistics, but these changes shouldn't break sorting. Using data-sort-type on column headers should actually have improved the predictability of sorting. So, maybe, clearing the browser cache will solve the problem. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 21:27, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

No, it does not depend on the cache, I have cleared everything several times. As said, it works when I am not logged in, so it somehow conflicts with some user setting... Emanuele676 (talk) 21:39, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Strange, I'm logged in and it works for me. Do you see the same behavior in the tables for Omicron and Delta? --Fernando Trebien (talk) 21:41, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

All columns work here. Even if the order is wrong, it is sorted by the day, without the month, I guess because it is not formatted for the date, which is why it works.

The table for Delta works perfectly for me but it does not have the data-sort-type="date", which is unexpected, as it does have data-sort-type="number" as recommended in Help:Sorting. Maybe there's some bug affecting some users but not others. I've made a small change, see it if works for you now, if it does not then I'll remove data-sort-type="date". --Fernando Trebien (talk) 22:04, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

No, it doesn't work now either, not a big problem anyway, just open the page incognito. I don't know how widespread the bug is. Emanuele676 (talk) 22:10, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Removed data-sort-type="date", would you try once more? --Fernando Trebien (talk) 23:20, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Now with June 1, the table no longer sorts correctly. Can you try again to put the type back to the column, so maybe it will sort correctly? Better that it doesn't work for a few users than for all, I guess. Emanuele676 (talk) 13:40, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

@Ftrebien, I found out now that it depends on the fact that I put the Italian language in the preferences. What a strange thing... Emanuele676 (talk) 00:48, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

It's a step forward. So this is related to the user's browser locale setting. I asked for help at Help talk:Sorting § Possible locale-dependent sort bug as I don't know what's the best place to report this. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 02:16, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Not browser preferences, but local Wikipedia preferences, the field called "Internationalization

Language (Warning: Selecting a language other than 'en - English' will prevent you from seeing localized parts of the interface on the English Wikipedia, and you may see inaccurate external translations.)" If it is English, the sorting works; if it is in Italian, the sorting does not work. I hypothesize because at that point it no longer recognizes the month as a month because it looks for the Italian name instead of the English name, but I'm just guessing. Emanuele676 (talk) 02:25, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

That is most likely the cause. So it looks like the bug only occurs if someone logs in and changes the language in the user preferences. Since most people read Wikipedia without logging in (contributors like us are an exception), they don't encounter this problem. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 11:35, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Emanuele676: See Help talk:Sorting § Possible locale-dependent sort bug. This is a known bug since 2016 and it is not being prioritized because it affects very few users. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 16:09, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

In estimation, I don't think there are few registered users who use English-language Wikipedia even if they are not native English speakers, but whatever, I solved it by bookmarking the link. Emanuele676 (talk) 16:27, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I wrapped the dates in {{dts}} and I think this will solve this for users with this type of configuration, while making editing using the visual editor a bit more complicated (so it may be a bit controversial). It can be undone easily. Other than this, I can't think of any other possible solution other than reverting the table to its state before following the accessibility guidelines. --Fernando Trebien (talk) 16:36, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

In the other table, there are no dates. Emanuele676 (talk) 21:48, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens exactly? No sorting at all, or sorting in incorrect order? --Fernando Trebien (talk) 21:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Simply after clicking nothing changes. But I noticed that if I sort the table by another column, and then sort by the columns with the dates, and I get to "default," it puts them back to default, so it's like only that order works and not the ascending or descending order. Emanuele676 (talk) 21:53, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

It's caused by changing interface language at Special:Preferences. Compare English and Italian. It's mentioned at Help:Sorting#Month names and phab:T126744. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:01, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Table sorting

The table doesn't seem to be sorting right. I tried to sort by date of first case and its placing all the [no date available] cases first, then the June ones, then the May ones. It should be sorting by date order, not alphabetical order. -184.56.75.144 (talk) 14:32, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

It seems to be a problem with language selection. See the above discussion. MarioGom (talk) 14:25, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Suspected countries later discarded

I am adding countries which reported suspected cases but later ruled out those cases, and it would be very helpful if you remind me of those countries, as I remember many more countries reported suspected cases but not their names. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk • contribs) 17:33, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Do anybody remember about French Guiana? Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 15:41, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I removed it. There were two cases and both were discarded. Source: [17]. Note that French Guiana is a French department, and confirmed cases are likely to be reported by the French Government. MarioGom (talk) 18:22, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

WHO situation update

There is a lot of information in WHO's latest situation update. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ftrebien (talk • contribs) 11:22, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

References

Info verification

Can anybody verify that Afghanistan really did confirm its first case on 4 June? The source provided does not back that up.

Also, can somebody verify the same for Columbia? My antivirus is yelling at me so I can't see the source myself, but the title makes it seems more like a suspected case than an actual one. -184.56.75.144 (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Hello.

Afghanistan's case wasn't confirmed, it's acyually an old news of 29May reporting 2 'suspected' cases.

And talking of Columbia, yes that was suspected. Columbia's case was actually of a Spanish tourist who was in Columbia for some days, so actually that case is suspected and also not of Columbia. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 15:21, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Remember the Brazilian in Germany. 73.126.133.15 (talk) 15:25, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

He is included in the German tally officially. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 17:36, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the sources on the suspected Afghanistan cases were quite dubious. As time passes without further news about it, I'm more convinced it might have been a bad report. I would support removing it from the table until further reliable sources appear. MarioGom (talk) 15:49, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I think if that Taliban spokesperson told the truth then those suspected cases are already discarded, as he said that suspected cases in Nomruz, Kabul and Herat were tested negative.

And, what about Colombia? It's not a Colombian case and it also went back to Spain according to the report. I support removing Colombia also from the table. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 11:24, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I have removed Afghanistan (diff) per [18]. MarioGom (talk) 14:18, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

First of all, it is Colombia not Columbia (It is really annoying for Colombians when foreigners misspell it). I have not found anything about suspected cases in Spanish news sites about Colombia, in fact, I have found an article from El Espectador published on June 6th, it talks about the possibility of monkeypox in Colombia entering the country, (All sentences that talk about Monkeypox in Colombia are written in the future or conditional tense) but nothing has been suspected or confirmed yet, the Colombian health authorities have confirmed that the suspected cases in May had nothing to do with monkeypox. So it would be better to remove Colombia from the tables, in addition, if someone decides to remove it, they should edit the map on Wikimedia Commons and change the color of Colombia.--Seb { 💬 Talk + 📝 Edits } 01:22, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I would have waited more than two days to clear the suspect case, but okay. Also because I understand that in South America there are also problems with the supply of kits. Emanuele676 (talk) 18:53, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Any update about Bolivia? It's been more than two weeks. Zeeshan Y Tariq (talk) 16:03, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm keeping an eye at local news. The problem with some countries in Latin America is that they are sending samples abroad to Argentina or other countries, since they have no local facilities for the appropriate tests. Or in other cases they may be waiting to receive equipment. So some of them have a long cycle between detecting a suspect case and confirming or discarding it. MarioGom (talk) 09:52, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Breakdown of cases along medical / epidemiological criteria?

Does anyone know of a source (ideally aggregating all the cases world-wide), where some basic (relevant) facts about people infected are reported?

Eg - female/male; perhaps age; whether the source of transmission is known; if yes, manner of contact with "source" (eg sexual or not). (A breakdown / allocation to week of confirmation would be a huge bonus of course!)

I'm sure this kind of data are being looked at by government agencies, but I think it'd be great to have that as public information as well! Regards Sean Heron (talk) 09:16, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I've not seen raw data reported in this way. We have text in the article saying how most cases are in young to middle-aged men, etc. Bondegezou (talk) 11:02, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CEBhao3rMe-qtCbAgJTn5ZKQMRFWeAeaiXFpBY3gbHE/edit#gid=0 Emanuele676 (talk) 15:07, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I don’t think we can do anything with primary data of that sort under WP:MEDRS. It would be pretty dodgy under even WP:PRIMARY/WP:SYNTH. Wikipedia editors must resist the temptation of be data journalists and focus on Wikipedia’s established policy of focusing on reliable secondary (or tertiary) interpretations of data. Bondegezou (talk) 15:13, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Most health authorities are not releasing this data. There's some anecdotal data in the press about individual cases, usually for the first few cases in a country. Some countries like Portugal released some age range initially, but they have not updated it. My guess is that there's currently no reliable source for this information, because it's not released at all. MarioGom (talk) 18:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers everyone (Bondegezou - not sure I agree with you entirely on that point - COVID-19 page worked very well as a data agregator during the beginning of the pandemic - but anyway, I wasn't really saying we should collect, just asking if anyone is aware of sources)..
Mario, yeah, that was my impression (data not being released). I did just find this for Portugal: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2022.27.22.2200424 Regards Sean Heron (talk) 23:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Spain is now releasing a bit more about this. See my later comments at #Majority of cases in gay and bisexual men (MSM). MarioGom (talk) 19:44, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Including footnotes to the timeline tables

Uhooep: I see you removed footnotes to references in the timeline of first cases. I started introducing them for easier verifiability and text-source integrity. Given the distance of the information, it is useful for both readers and editors that footnotes are present in both tables. Also note that in the process of removing these footnotes, the reference to Ghana's first case was removed completely. MarioGom (talk) 06:44, 9 June 2022 (UTC)