In July, the World Health Organization suggested that men who have sex with men “for now” cut back on their partners and rethink sleeping with new people as a way to slow the spread of monkeypox.
Sometimes rubbing up against an infected person (besides sex) isn’t enough to make you sick, according to Dr. Barry Pierre, an internal medicine physician who has been fighting the misinformation about monkeypox on TikTok.
“Unless you have cracks in your skin, [the virus] being in your shoes is not going to seal the deal,” Pierre told BuzzFeed News. “You still have to enter it into your body” by touching your face, mouth, nose or genitals.
Still, it won’t hurt to wash your hands often, especially before and after eating. After all, we are still in the middle of a deadly pandemic. (More than 300 people still die every day from COVID in the US.)
Other activities that involve prolonged close and skin-to-skin contact, such as raves and carousel parties, for example, carry some risk, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid these events if that’s what you like to do.
“You can still have fun and have a good time, but maybe keep your shirt on or try to stay with friends or people you know all the time at a party or rave, etc.,” Hazra said. “It doesn’t mean you have to deprive yourself of those experiences, but you can continue to do that, but maybe in a safer way.”
Touching contaminated surfaces, objects or fabrics
There isn’t enough data to know for sure the likelihood of contracting monkeypox by touching contaminated surfaces or materials, but a new study from Germany, published in June in the journal Eurosurveillance, shows that the virus does survive on a variety of surfaces — but whether those virus particles can infect someone remains unknown.
The researchers took swabs from the hospital rooms of two monkeypox patients (both men in their 30s) on the fourth day of their hospital stay and found monkeypox virus DNA on all surfaces and materials touched by the patients, with the highest burden in their bathrooms and toilet seats, as well as cabinet door handles “probably” touched by medical personnel.
Samples collected from researchers’ gloves, a soap dispenser and a towel on one of the patients’ beds were able to infect cells in a lab dish, but the team cannot confirm whether actual infection is possible through contact with these surfaces, in part because we don’t know how much virus is needed to achieve this.
A separate 2020 study found that a UK nurse contracted monkeypox in 2018 after touching a patient’s contaminated bed despite wearing an apron and disposable gloves.
It’s not clear how long monkeypox survives on different surfaces, but the CDC says orthopoxviruses can generally survive indoors for weeks or months, and that porous materials like bedding and clothing can harbor the germs for longer periods than non-porous ones like plastic, metal, and glass. One study found that live monkeypox virus survived in an infected person’s home for 15 days after they left. In general, the virus lives longer in a dark, cool environment with low humidity.
Still, experts aren’t convinced that touching contaminated surfaces is an effective means of transmission. If so, the data would have shown that by now, especially in Europe and Canada, where monkeypox has been spreading since early May, Hazra said. However, it is possible to get sick this way if you live with an infected person, sharing the same surfaces and materials for hours or days.
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