While the disease itself is considered to be relatively mild, and in most cases will naturally clear up in a few weeks, it can more seriously affect immunocompromised people, children, and pregnant women. Symptoms of monkeypox include a fever, headaches, back and muscle aches, chills and tiredness, and, most characteristically, a pox-like rash. This rash usually appears between one and three days after developing a fever, and generally progresses from the face to the rest of the body before scabbing over and eventually falling off after around two weeks...
While these lesions aren't itchy like chicken pox, as Andrea McCollum, the poxvirus epidemiology team lead in the CDC's division of high consequence pathogens and pathology, told STAT, they are generally painful.
"The lesions themselves often are described as being very painful, irrespective of where they occur on the body," she said. "It's only during that healing phase [with monkeypox] when there's crusting and the skin is regenerating a bit, patients mention itching.".......
These monkeypox lesions may also lead to hypo- or hyper-pigmentation and scarring, and lighter areas where lesions were in people with dark skin. The lesions may also turn into keloid scars, which are raised scars that are enlarged and can be shiny, hairless, hard and rubbery and red or purple at first, before becoming brown or pale.