Quick update on what I know about the Monkeypox situation. Cases counts associated with several of the major clusters — England, Canada, and especially Spain — continue to climb but we are seeing only a few isolated cases from other countries (Israel, Netherlands, Switzerland).

From the reports I've seen, genome sequences from European cases that are available to date (1) are associated with the less virulent West African clade, and (2) indicate minimal coding sequence evolution relative to that clade.

To me the situation is looking more and more like we have a fairly limited outbreak mostly within one particular community (MSM) rather than large amounts of cryptic transmission perhaps driven by adaptation for better human-to-human spread.

That would be largely good news.

Of course this is highly provisional based on very limited evidence, and these types of situations change rapidly early on. We will learn a lot more in the next few days.