In the past month, monkeypox cases all over the world has been significantly growing, causing international panic. To date, there have already been over 2,000 monkeypox cases reported across 40 countries globally outside of West Africa, countries that do not usually see monkeypox infections and are not endemic for monkeypox virus such as Canada, United Kingdom, United States, around Europe, Singapore, and many more. Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) has publicly announced that it is unlikely for this monkeypox outbreak to escalate into a pandemic like we had just experienced with COVID-19, it is always good to take early precautions into controlling and preventing the infection.
Let’s Get Educated About the Monkeypox Virus!
How to Test Disinfectants Against Monkeypox Virus?
“Oh no, Michael, are our disinfectants going to help fight this new monkeypox outbreak?”—Don’t fret, TECOLAB has the solution for you. Unfortunately, using monkeypox virus itself in laboratory testing can pose microbiological safety risks so as an alternative, the European standard EN 14476 states that demonstrating efficacy against vaccinia virus is representative of demonstrating efficacy against all enveloped viruses (of which monkeypox virus is one). Besides that, vaccinia virus also belongs to the Orthopoxvirus genus of the Poxviridae family similar to monkeypox, making them very closely related viruses.
In more recent news, on July 7, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has announced that vaccinia virus has been identified as the representative surrogate virus to substantiate claims against Monkeypox. Therefore, evaluating your disinfectants with us using vaccinia virus will provide you with the claim against monkeypox virus.
TECOLAB can test the efficacy of your various antimicrobial products from surface disinfectants to antimicrobial gloves, airborne disinfection devices and many more against this infectious virus. Contact us to learn more about the suitable test method for virus testing and evaluate your products’ efficacy against monkeypox virus now!
References:
1. Monkeypox. (2022, May 19). World Health Organization (WHO). https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/monkeypox
2. Multi-country monkeypox outbreak: Situation update. (2022, June 27). World Health Organization (WHO). https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON396
3. Surrogate viruses for use in disinfectant efficacy tests to justify claims against Monkeypox. (2022). Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). https://www.tga.gov.au/behind-news/surrogate-viruses-use-disinfectant-efficacy-tests-justify-claims-against-monkeypox