Gunzburg: monkeys themselves could have contracted smallpox from rodents

Alexander Gintsburg, head of the Gamaleya Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, said that monkeys could have contracted smallpox from rodents. According to him, mice and rats are carriers of the virus.

“The monkeys themselves suffered, most likely, they got infected from rodents!” Gunzburg said on the air of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company.

He added that if this virus begins to be massively transmitted among people, it is possible that strains with increased virulence will appear, which “will already be very dangerous in epidemiological and clinical terms.”