If you are still suffering from the Covid pandemic, I am sorry to tell you that there is another virus, which we must control before the situation escalates and spreads further.

It's monkeypox, and there are about 80 confirmed cases in 11 countries, including the United Kingdom, where no such disease was expected.

What's going on and is it time for us to worry or be glad we finally got through COVID?

Let's be clear: This is not a new type of Covid and we are not at the gates of a general closure of monkeypox, but it is an unusual and unprecedented spread of this disease.

This disease has surprised disease scientists, and it always becomes a source of concern when the virus changes its behaviour.

The emergence of monkeypox was largely expected.

The natural habitat of the virus is wild animals, thought to be rodents, not monkeys.

The disease spreads most often in remote areas of Central and West African countries near tropical rainforests. Where a person from these areas touches an animal carrying the virus, the virus is transmitted from one type to another, which appears in the form of a rash first, and then turns into blisters and cracks.

The virus is currently spreading outside its natural habitat and there must be close, long-term contact to continue, so outbreaks tend to be small and go away on their own.

A few cases have appeared in other parts of the world previously, including the United Kingdom, but all of them can be directly linked to a person who traveled to a country where they were infected, and brought the virus with him to his country. But that does not apply to the current cases.

The virus was first detected in people with no apparent connection to West and Central Africa.

It's not clear who is most likely to contract the infection.

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Monkeypox is spread through sexual contact and in most cases causes a rash on their genitals and the surrounding area.

Many of those affected are homosexual and bisexual.

Professor Sir Peter Horby, director of the Institute of Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, told me: "We are faced with a very new case, which is surprising and alarming."

It is true that he says this is not a second type of Covid, but we "need to act" to prevent the virus from gaining a foothold and we should "avoid something like this" entirely.

Doctor Hugh Adler, who treated monkeypox patients, agreed: "We've never seen this pattern before, it's surprising.