Enlarge / A 2003 photo of the arms and legs of a 4-year-old girl infected with monkeypox in Liberia.
The monkey’s smallpox is thought to have spread to the United States and nine cases have now been identified in seven states, according to Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At a news conference Thursday, Walensky said the nine cases were from Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Utah, Washington, California and Virginia. Most of the nine cases had recent international trips to areas with active cases of smallpox, but not all.
“We have to assume that there is a bit of community outreach,” Walensky said. “But there is an active follow-up of contacts that is taking place at the moment to understand if and how these cases could have been in contact with each other or with others from other countries.”
On Monday, the CDC reported five cases (one confirmed and four probable) from four states, and all cases were reported to have a recent travel history. Health experts hope more cases will be identified as awareness of the infection grows and health officials will track contacts from known cases.
As before, almost all nine cases are found in men who identify as gay, bisexual, or have sex with men, reflecting what health officials elsewhere are seeing amid the current multinational outbreak.
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“This is a community that has the strength and has demonstrated the ability to address the challenges of their health by focusing on compassion and science,” Walensky said, referring to the response to the AIDS epidemic. .
Walensky stressed that the response to the current outbreak should be “guided by science, not stigma.” Although some groups may have a higher risk of infection, the virus infects indiscriminately. Infectious diseases “are not contained on social media and the risk of exposure is not limited to any particular group,” he said. The case of Virginia, for example, is in a woman who recently traveled to an African country.
The relatively small number of cases in the US is related to a growing outbreak affecting more than 20 countries, most of them in Europe. Unofficial records include 320 confirmed cases and an additional 73 suspected cases worldwide.
However, health experts consider the risk of monkeypox to the general population to be essentially very low. The virus is not easily transmitted between people, so prolonged and close contact is required to transmit it. As such, the relatives of the infected people and the health care workers who care for them are the most at risk. There are also effective antiviral treatments and vaccines available to fight monkeypox. U.S. health officials offer these options to health care workers and other contacts in known cases. Treatments and vaccines have already been used in California, Florida and Massachusetts, CDC officials said Thursday.