Monkeypox: Nine cases identified in seven states including New York

Nine cases of monkeypox have been identified in seven states including New York, but all the infections are mild and none of them are life-threatening, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

In recent days, more than 100 cases of monkeypox have been identified in Europe, North America, Israel and Australia according to the World Health Organization. For the first time, the rare disease appears to be spreading among people who didn’t travel to Africa, where monkeypox is endemic.

To date, most of the patients have been gay or bisexual men, but the disease is no more likely to infect this group than anyone else.

“This may just be unlucky that [monkeypox] happened to get into this one particular community first,” said Dr. Jake Dunning, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of Oxford, who is also involved in treating cases in London. “It’s just that they are a community and by having sex with each other, that is how it’s spreading,” he said.

Other experts warn the disease could spread more widely if measures aren’t taken to stop the outbreak.

“Our response will be empathy-based, science-based and transparency-based,” said Dr. Raj Panjabi, President Biden’s senior global health adviser.

Nine cases of monkeypox have been identified in seven states including New York, but all the infections are mild and none of them are life-threatening, health officials said Thursday.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, said anyone can get monkeypox through skin-to-skin contact with an infected person or contact with bodily fluids.

“The risk of exposure is not limited to any one particular limited group,” Walensky said. ”I urge everyone to approach this outbreak without stigma and without discrimination.”

Doctors stressed that there is no danger of monkeypox sparking a widespread pandemic like COVID-19.

The CDC first alerted gay and bisexual men on Monday that monkeypox appears to be spreading in the community globally with many cases reported in Europe.

Monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease, per se, but it can be spread by sexual partners.

This 1997 image was provided by the CDC during an investigation into an outbreak of monkeypox, which took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire.

Monkeypox usually begins with symptoms similar to the flu including fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, exhaustion and swollen lymph nodes. It then progresses to body rashes on the face, hands, feet, eyes, mouth or genitals that turn into raised bumps which then become blisters.

Patients are considered most infectious when they have a rash. Transmission from respiratory droplets is extremely rare.

The variant of monkeypox that is responsible for the U.S. outbreak is considered mild.

The U.S. has 1,000 doses of a vaccine approved for the prevention of monkeypox and smallpox, plus more than 100 million doses of an older-generation smallpox vaccine in a government stockpile, officials said