Reemergence of Human Monkeypox and Declining Population Immunity in the Context of Urbanization, Nigeria, 2017–2020

Global Biodefense March 9, 2021 Using the monkeypox outbreak in Nigeria during 2017–2020 researchers in Australia built a statistical model to simulate declining immunity from monkeypox at 2 levels: At the individual level, they used a constant rate of decline in immunity of 1.29% per year as smallpox vaccination rates fell. At the population level, the cohort of vaccinated residents decreased over time because of deaths and births. By 2016, only 10.1% of the total population in Nigeria was vaccinated against smallpox; the serologic immunity level was 25.7% among vaccinated persons and 2.6% in the overall population. The substantial resurgence […]