In May 2022, the United States confirmed the first monkeypox case in Massachusetts. As of Sept. 24, there have been 24,846 confirmed cases in all 50 states, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

Monkeypox virus is a part of the same family as the variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. Individuals who are infected may experience a milder version of smallpox symptoms, according to the CDC.

The most common symptoms are rashes that initially may look like pimples or blisters, and can appear on various parts of the body such as the face, inside the mouth, hands, feet and genitals, the CDC said.The lesions are often described as painful until the healing phase. The illness normally lasts 2-4 weeks. The virus is rarely fatal.

Monkeypox can be spread to anyone through close contact with a person that is infected. The virus can be transmitted through intimate physical contact such as sex, kissing, hugging or direct contact with infectious rashes, scabs or fluids.

Jeff Hogan, an animal health researcher at the University of Georgias Department of Infectious Diseases, said once a person is infected with monkeypox, the virus begins to slowly replicate to where it spreads systemically in the body. This means that after the rashes appear on the skin, the virus will spread through the circulatory system, which deals with pumping blood through the body, and to the internal organs such as the spleen and liver.

When it comes to creating the vaccine for monkeypox, the process in which the virus is repeatedly grown causes it to be diluted and not as harmful as it originally was, Hogan said. Later on, the weakened live virus is injected into a person as the vaccine.

Once an individual has been vaccinated, the virus will replicate in the body, Hogan said. With the presence of the virus in the body, white blood cells respond against the virus by creating antibodies.

The immune system would recognize that vaccine as something foreign, generating the antibodies response, said Jarrod Mousa, a UGA assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases. The antibodies would then create a long lasting protection against monkeypox and smallpox.

With the shortage of vaccine availability, the vaccines are given with a decrease in the dosage.

Overall, the decrease in dosage may be beneficial to the individual getting vaccinated as it also decreases the number of adverse effects, Hogan said, but the person needs to have enough of the virus particles in order for the antibodies to be created.

The decrease in dosage has led to the monkeypox vaccine being administered two different ways: subcutaneously, where the vaccine is inserted in a layer of fat between the skin and muscle, and intradermally, where the vaccine is injected into the top layer of the skin, according to the CDC.

Rama Amara, a professor at Emory Universitys vaccine center and department of microbiology and immunology, said injecting the vaccine into the skin and giving a lower dose of it could produce an immune response. There are different kinds of cells in the skin that trigger the white blood cells to make antibodies.

In comparison to the COVID-19 virus, the monkeypox vaccine is a live virus while the COVID-19 dealt with an mRNA vaccine, Mousa said. The COVID-19 vaccine uses messenger RNA as its genetic material but the vaccines are only the instructions for making a part of the virus, meaning that the live virus is not injected.

According to Mousa, with monkeypox, once the individual is vaccinated, the DNA of the live virus gives instructions to the cells on how to make more of it. The virus has proteins on its surface and contains DNA on the inside to store its genetic material.

For individuals who are planning to get vaccinated, it is important to look at risk factors, Amara said. We need to think about people with HIV [and who had a] transplant; these are more vulnerable people. So we need to see if we are going to see an increased infection among these people, Amara said.

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Everything to know about the Monkeypox vaccine | Health - Red and Black