MOSCOW, January 15. /TASS/. Pentagon biologists are conducting research on how to weaponize the monkeypox virus, Chief of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said.

"Of particular concern is the growing number of studies of variola viruses and other human-pathogenic orthopox viruses conducted by American military specialists. Namely, the study of the monkeypox virus as a potential damaging biological agent and the search for agent imitators of variola viruses," he said at a briefing going over documents relating to Washington’s military-biological activities.

Kirillov recalled that working with this virus is only allowed in two institutions - the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA and the Vector state scientific center in Russia.

The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the first case of monkeypox in May 2022 when a UK tourist returning from Nigeria was diagnosed with the virus. In total, from January 2022 to October 31, 2023, 91,788 laboratory-confirmed cases of monkeypox were identified.

After the outbreak of the virus, a state of emergency was declared, lasting from July 2022 to May 11, 2023. It was lifted when cases began to drop. In Russia, two imported cases of the disease have been confirmed since the outbreak began. Both patients were discharged from infectious disease medical institutions after their full recovery.

Monkeypox is a rare viral disease that occurs in remote areas of central and western Africa near tropical forests. The first case of the disease being transmitted from an animal to humans was recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the WHO, the virus is transmitted to humans from wild animals such as rodents and primates. Typically, the case fatality rate for outbreaks is between 1% and 10%. However, the majority of deaths occur in younger age groups.