As Covid-19 cases surge across the United States dominated by a highly transmissible subvariant and worry about Covid persists, some in the public have begun to voice concern about the new health threat of monkeypox, according to a new Annenberg Public Policy Center national survey.

While 1 in 3 Americans worry about getting Covid-19 in the next three months, according to the July survey, nearly 1 in 5 are concerned about contracting monkeypox, a disease endemic in parts of Africa whose spread to 75 countries across the globe led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global health emergency on July 23, days after the survey was completed.

The nationally representative panel of 1,580 U.S. adults surveyed by SSRS for the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania from July 12-18, 2022, was the seventh wave of an Annenberg Science Knowledge (ASK) survey whose respondents were first empaneled in April 2021. The margin of sampling error is ± 3.3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. See the appendix and methodology for additional information on the survey.

The survey answers such questions as: How worried is the public about becoming infected with Covid-19 or monkeypox? Does the public possess basic knowledge about monkeypox? And how widespread is misinformation about monkeypox?