Since early May, more than 23,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported worldwide. This is the largest ever global outbreak of the disease. Cases have now been reported in 78 countries including the UK, Spain, Germany, France, the US and Brazil.
Given the scale of the outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) has now declared the current monkeypox epidemic a global health emergency.
While anyone can get monkeypox, the current outbreak is overwhelmingly affecting sexually active gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.
In fact, our recent study which looked at 528 monkeypox infections since the start of the outbreak found that 98% of these infections had occurred in this group.