The mystery of the monkeypox virus’s natural reservoir was solved in the 1970s after the first case of monkeypox in a human was confirmed in Zaire – now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo – in central Africa. This was odd because a viral infection produces antibodies that can be found in an animal’s blood even years later. To test this theory, they took blood samples from more than a thousand monkeys in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan, but found that none of the animals had monkeypox antibodies. Tests were done at the State Serum Institute in Copenhagen, and scientists realised they had discovered a brand-new virus.īecause the virus and the disease occurred in monkeys, they named it monkeypox.īetween 19, several outbreaks of monkeypox occurred in lab monkeys, and because all the monkeys had come from Asia, scientists at first thought the virus reservoir was in Asia. In 1958, a lab in Denmark noticed a strange smallpox-like disease in monkeys that had arrived from Malaysia. So, thousands of monkeys were shipped from Asia to these labs. But they needed an army of lab monkeys to do their job. Labs in Europe and North America were busy making and testing vaccines. In the 1950s the world was getting serious about fighting polio.
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