The United States aims to distribute nearly 800,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine to state and local health departments this summer to combat the growing monkeypox epidemic. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker recently issued a proclamation declaring monkeypox a public health emergency and the state of Illinois a disaster area as a result of the increase in cases.
Illinois and California join New York in declaring a state of emergency for monkey pox. Collectively, these three states account for 46 percent of confirmed cases in the United States.
But virologists have been warning about monkeypox for decades.
In a 2020 publication in the journal Viruses, Malachy Ifeanyi Okeke of the American University in Nigeria described monkeypox as a serious re-emerging pathogen with a global reach. Worse was the concern that monkeypox might fill the niche of a smallpox virus. The smallpox virus is the causative agent of smallpox, which caused approximately 300 million deaths since 1900 before being declared eradicated in 1980 following a massive worldwide vaccination campaign.
Current data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed more than 6,600 cases of monkeypox in the United States in 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Globally, more than 26,000 cases have been confirmed in 87 countries.
The vast majority of cases, 98 percent, have been identified in countries that have historically not reported cases of monkeypox. The Indiana Department of Health recently announced that monkeypox had been detected in two children, bringing the total number of pediatric cases in the state to five.
Despite failing to classify the ongoing monkeypox virus outbreak as a public health emergency in June, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, did so after the Committee’s second convening of Emergency of the International Health Regulations at the end of July.
In a systematic review published earlier this year in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Robert Steffen and colleagues noted a more than 10-fold increase in confirmed, probable, and/or possible smallpox cases over the previous five decades .
There are multiple theories as to why cases of monkeypox are on the rise, including climate change and deforestation. A main hypothesis about this increase in cases of monkeypox is related to the vaccine. People vaccinated against smallpox had about 85 percent protection against smallpox. However, routine vaccination against smallpox in the general public ended in 1972 in the United States, so there are fewer people with immune protection today.
Scientists have not identified the natural reservoir of the monkeypox virus, but it is believed to be small rodent mammals. Monkeypox virus was first identified in 1958 as the cause of infections in a group of laboratory monkeys, but it was not until 1970 that the first human case was identified in the Democratic Republic of of the Congo, and the vast majority of cases occurred in the center. and West Africa. Until now, cases identified outside of Africa were associated with travel.
However, this is not the first outbreak of monkeypox outside of Africa. A multistate outbreak in 2003 was associated with 47 confirmed and probable infections. Public health officials and epidemiologists traced the source of the outbreak to prairie dogs that were housed at an animal facility in Illinois that also housed animals imported from Ghana. In that outbreak, all laboratory-confirmed cases had exposure to a prairie dog.
A woman walks near the sign for the New York City Monkey Pox Vaccine Clinic on August 2, 2022 in the Bronx. John Smith/VIEWpress/Getty Images
Monkey pox is here and it’s not going away. Much of the focus on monkey pox is being directed at the LGBTQ+ community.
It’s hard not to see similar parallels to the early days of the HIV epidemic. However, monkey pox is not a “gay disease”. While it is true that a disproportionate number of cases are being reported in men who have sex with men, monkeypox is a virus that will infect anyone, including children. Animals and pets can also be infected with monkeypox.
Monkey pox is transmitted directly by skin-to-skin contact. Transmission can occur by touching the rash or scabs of monkeypox lesions or by oral-respiratory secretions. It can also spread from shared clothes, towels and bedding. There are reports of patients with internal injuries to the mucous membranes of the mouth and rectum. These lesions are not always visible, which can allow the virus to be transmitted during intimate activities, such as kissing or anal sex.
Certainly, targeting the most at-risk communities with prevention-focused educational messages and strategies to reduce the risk of contracting a pathogen is a crucial role for public health experts, but it cannot be the only component to combat the growing epidemic of monkey pox.
Public health experts say monkeypox can be contained, but the window is closing fast. To effectively reduce the spread and control this epidemic, it is vital to ensure that health care providers consider monkeypox when seeing patients in clinics.
It is imperative that access to laboratory testing be expanded beyond public health and large commercial reference laboratories to reduce testing bottlenecks, as seen early in the influenza pandemic. COVID-19. Federal officials and state health departments must distribute large quantities of vaccine and vaccinate people at risk. This path was successful in preventing smallpox from spreading in 1947 in New York City.
Most importantly, a broader view of pandemic preparedness is needed to avoid repeating some of the early mistakes of COVID-19.
Nicholas Moore, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Medical Laboratory Sciences, Infectious Diseases, and Pathology at Rush University Medical Center and a Public Voices member of The OpEd Project.
The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own.