The US has identified 45 monkeypox cases in 15 states and the District of Columbia, while the multinational outbreak has reached more than 1,300 confirmed cases from at least 31 countries. There have been no deaths.
The US health officials gave an update on efforts to stop the spread of the virus and dispelled rumors that it was spreading through the air.
No cases of airborne transmission have been reported so far in the outbreak, which has mostly been spread through sexual networks of men who have sex with men. Health care providers are encouraged to wear masks and take other precautions during certain procedures, such as intubation, because monkeypox can spread through respiratory droplets. The potential for spread via small, long-range aerosols is more speculative.
"Monkeypox is not thought to linger in the air and is not typically transmitted during short periods of shared airspace," said Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She said there was no evidence to suggest that it was spreading by having a casual conversation, passing someone in a store, or touching the same item.
The current outbreak is being spread through close, sustained physical contact, she said. It's consistent with what we've seen before and what we know from decades of studying this virus.
Some of the country's 45 cases are still being collected by the CDC, but all of them are related to direct physical contact. International travel is linked to most of the time.
According to the deputy director of CDC's Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, close contact can be associated with skin-on-skin contact. People are very intimate and close with one another, so it's difficult to separate out a face-to-face transmission from a direct skin-on-skin contact. All of our patients have reported contact with their skin.
After The New York Times ran a controversial story this week emphasizing the potential for airborne transmission, officials were eager to clarify the points. Evidence of airborne transmission for monkeypox is not the primary mode of transmission, according to experts. Health authorities have been working hard to avoid the increase of stigma that can come from the article.
AdvertisementUnlike the novel coronaviruses, which public health officials and virologists scrambled to understand during the mushrooming Pandemic, experts have decades of experience with monkeypox. The first cases of the virus in humans were seen in 1970. The virus is endemic in Central and West Africa and can be found in animals. There have been more than 1,400 confirmed and suspected cases in endemic countries this year and 66 deaths.
Health officials are trying to contain the current outbreak and warn people to take it seriously. The World Health Organization called on countries to make every effort to identify all cases and contacts in order to stop the outbreak.
The risk of monkeypox becoming established in non-endemic countries is real.
Men who have sex with men are more likely to be affected by the outbreak than other people. Some cases have been identified in women. Tedros said that WHO is concerned about the risks of the virus for vulnerable groups.
Some of the work that was done to contain the outbreak was highlighted in Friday's briefings. It begins with raising awareness about the disease and what it looks like. Unless people know what to look for, cases can't be traced.
In the past, monkeypox has presented, but not entirely, as it has in the current outbreak: an illness that develops five to 21 days after a person is bitten. Normally, monkeypox begins as a flu-like illness and progresses to include a rash with blisters all over the body, concentrating on the hands, feet, and face. The lesions begin as flat and then are filled with fluid. The virus can be spread by direct contact with the fluids or materials that are contaminated by the lesions. A person is thought to be no longer contagious when a fresh layer of skin forms after all the old skin has fallen off.
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