For a world tired of fighting coronavirus, the monkeypox outbreak raises a key question: Am I at risk?
The answer is reassuring. According to experts, most children and adults with healthy immune systems can avoid serious illnesses. But there are two high-risk groups.
One includes babies under six months. But they are not yet affected by the current outbreak. And many older adults, the group most likely to succumb to the monkeypox virus, are at least somewhat protected from decades of smallpox vaccines, studies suggest.
Vaccinated older adults can become infected, but are likely to escape with only mild symptoms.
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“The end result is that even those who were vaccinated many decades ago maintain a very, very high level of antibodies,” said Dr. Luigi Ferrucci, scientific director of the National Institute on Aging.
“Even if they were vaccinated 50 years ago, that protection should still exist,” he said. In the United States, routine smallpox immunization ceased in 1972.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration’s top infectious disease adviser, said it was reasonable to assume that most vaccinated people were still protected, “but the durability of protection varies from person to person.” .
The smallpox outbreak has grown to include about 260 confirmed cases and more scores under investigation in 21 countries.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks nine cases in seven states, not all of which have a history of travel to countries where monkeypox is endemic. This suggests that there may already be some level of community transmission.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, told reporters Thursday that 74 labs in 46 states have access to a test that can detect monkeypox, and together they can examine up to 7,000 samples a week. The agency is working to expand that capacity, he said.
Experts stressed that while the monkey’s smallpox can be serious and even fatal, the current outbreak is unlikely to turn into a major epidemic.
“We’re lucky to have vaccines and therapeutics,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We have the ability to stop this virus.”
The monkeypox takes up to 12 days to cause symptoms, giving doctors a period of at least five days after exposure to vaccinate and prevent disease.
Written by Apoorva Mandavilli. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.