A patient in New York tested positive for a monkeypox virus, prompting health officials to urge Covid-tired Americans to wear face masks indoors as the United States rushed to buy 13 million doses of the vaccine.
Two patients were tested by the city’s health department for monkeypox, a rare infection that causes rashes, lesions and fever that has suddenly appeared in several countries in recent weeks.
One patient was ruled out as negative, while the other was positive for Orthopoxvirus, the family of viruses to which monkeypox belongs.
The Public Health Laboratory of the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a press release Friday that the final confirmation of the individual’s diagnosis will come after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) completes its tests.
Until then, the patient is in isolation and is expected to be positive, making him probably the second known case on American soil this year, after a man in Massachusetts became the first confirmed case on Wednesday.
The New York Health Department said Thursday that a possible case was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in the heart of Manhattan, showing symptoms.
It is not clear if this person is the alleged positive or negative case, but even before the preliminary tests returned, officials said tracking of contacts had already begun to track anyone who may have been in close contact with them.
The CDC urges Americans not to panic. The New York Health Agency recommends that Manhattan residents disguise themselves indoors.
The agency said the masks could protect against both monkeypox and other viruses such as Covid-19, while anyone with flu-like symptoms, swollen lymph nodes and rashes on the face and body is urged to contact their healthcare provider. .
Health officials are desperate to avoid a repeat of the Covid-19 crisis, which has crippled the city’s health system.
In the first days of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, New York quickly became the global viral epicenter with 815 lives lost in one day in April of that year.
Hospitals were on the verge of collapse as health workers were overwhelmed with sick patients and bodies piled up in refrigerated trucks around the city.
Covid-19 cases are on the rise in Manhattan again, with New York City rising to its highest risk of the virus this week.
At least six other possible cases of the infection are also being investigated by the CDC after they sat near an infected passenger on a flight from Nigeria to the United Kingdom earlier this month.
The entrance to Massachusetts General Hospital, where the first confirmed patient in the United States is being treated for monkeypox
(Reuters)
The CDC said none of the six showed symptoms of monkeypox. They are said to be healthy and at low risk of infection.
The New York patient does not appear to be included in the six.
This comes after a man from Massachusetts became the first confirmed case on American soil this year.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced the case of the man who recently returned from a trip to Canada, where he traveled by private transport, on Wednesday.
The patient is in good condition at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The state agency said there was “no risk to society” and that it was working closely with the CDC and other health officials to identify anyone who may have been in contact with the patient while he was infected.
While smallpox is less contagious and less common than Covid-19, US officials are not waiting for the cases to rise before taking action.
The US government has placed a $ 119 million contract with Bavarian Nordic for the Jynneos vaccine, which is effective against both the monkeypox virus and smallpox virus, the biotechnology company revealed this week.
An additional $ 180 million is also ready and waiting for more vaccines if or when needed, allowing the country to buy 13 million doses.
CDC spokeswoman Jennifer McQueston said “the general public should not worry” about the sudden rise in rare disease infections, but acknowledged that “this is a very unusual situation.”
“Monkeypox is usually only reported in West Africa or Central Africa and we don’t see it in the United States or Europe – and the number of reported cases is definitely out of the ordinary for what we would see,” she told CNN.
“At the same time, there really aren’t that many cases being reported – I think maybe a dozen, a few dozen – so the general public shouldn’t have to worry about being at immediate risk for monkeypox.”
Since the beginning of May, the World Health Organization has been holding daily emergency meetings around the world, as cases have occurred in several countries that do not usually report infections.
In addition to the United States, cases have already been detected in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, with more than 100 cases already confirmed or suspected across Europe.
It is not yet clear how people were exposed to the rare infection.
The virus can be spread through close contact with an infected person or animal through respiratory droplets, body fluids or other forms of close contact, such as sharing clothes.
Experts are currently investigating the possible spread of sexually transmitted diseases, after recent confirmed cases included men who said they were sexually active.
Symptoms are said to be similar to smallpox and include fever, headache, chills, muscle aches and exhaustion.
After about one to three days of fever, the patient usually develops a rash on the face before spreading to other parts of the body. The lesions on the body go through various stages before they eventually disappear.
The main difference between the symptoms of smallpox and monkeypox is that monkeypox causes swollen lymph nodes, according to the CDC.
In most cases, the symptoms are mild, but the virus has been fatal in about one in 10 cases in Africa.
Monkeypox was first discovered in monkeys in 1958, when two outbreaks of measles-like disease were detected in samples held for testing.
The first case of people was registered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970.
In 2003, cases of human monkeypox were discovered on American soil – the first confirmed outside of Africa – when the nation witnessed an outbreak in six states.
A total of 47 confirmed and probable cases have been reported in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin.
All patients became infected after coming into contact with domestic prairie dogs that were kept close to imported small mammals from Ghana, according to the CDC.
Two cases of infection were reported in the United States last year. The last was in November, when an American tested positive after returning to Maryland from Nigeria.
In July, another case was confirmed in Texas with an American citizen who also traveled from Nigeria to the United States on two trade flights.
In both cases, no additional infections were found in the United States after health officials tracked the contacts.
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