A man in New York started to feel unwell.
"He starts to experience rectal pain and swelling of the lysies," says Makofane.
The man thinks he may have a disease. Makofane says he's knowledgeable about the signs and symptoms. The man went to his doctor and asked for a test. The doctor decided that the man should be tested for STDs. They came back negative.
The pain gets worse a few days later. He went to the urgent care and asked for a monkeypox test. He was prescribed antibiotics for a bug.
Makofane says that the pain begins to interfere with his sleep. He went to the emergency room of a big academic hospital in New York over the weekend.
The man has a growth in his rectum which is a sign of monkeypox. He sees an ER doctor at the hospital. The man is asking for a test. Makofane says the specialist said a monkeypox test wasn't indicated. The doctor thinks the man may have colon cancer.
He develops skin problems a few days later.
The monkeypox outbreak in the US is not as bad as other countries. More than 200 cases of monkeypox have been recorded in the U.S. The U.K. has hundreds of cases. Germany has more than 500.
According to Makofane and other scientists, the official case count in the US is not accurate. The case count suggests that the outbreak is smaller than it really is.
Health officials don't know how a person got the disease. They haven't been in contact with another person who has the same disease. The virus is spreading in some places.
A lot of links in the transmission chain are missing because we can't reconstruct it. They haven't had the chance to get the medicines that will help them recover faster and not get sick.
It's possible that they're spreading the virus without knowing that they're sick.
Joseph Osmundson is a Biologist at New York University.
Why aren't many cases being detected? It's testing. The U.S. has not done a good job on monkeypox testing.
Public health agencies are running too few tests. The state uses a narrow definition of monkeypox to decide who gets a test. Only a very limited number of cases are being tested.
Makofane knows the person. The man eventually found an activist who was trying to expand testing. An activist connects a man with a doctor who wants to order a test from a private company. He is positive. The man has a disease.
The testing situation in the U.S. is so bad that Makofane launched his own study to figure out the prevalence of monkeypox.
The CDC wouldn't say how many tests have been done across the country or where community transmission is likely to occur in the U.S.
The New York Times was told by the CDC that it has performed over one thousand monkeypox tests. It is not known how many of these tests are duplicate tests for the same person. Several sources doubt the agency has tested that many cases. According to one source, the CDC had tested about 300 cases. Positive tests gave a positivity rate of more than 30%.
The CDC helped set up testing in about 70 state and local labs when the outbreak started. The agency had a test that was ready to be sent to labs.
Nuzzo says that we should celebrate. Preparedness means that.
The testing system set up by the CDC stopped functioning because it deterred doctors from ordering a monkeypox test.
To order a test, providers need to leave their way. Permission and instructions from the local or state lab are required. The process can take a long time. A doctor can be on the phone for a long time.
She says that they're concerned about that. We need to find infections that are not present. It's hard to make it easy for health care providers to request a test when they're busy.
The barriers to testing need to be removed. I want to make it easier for clinicians to test a patient. A patient with a rash.
Doctors and nurses need to be aware of what monkeypox looks like. It's not the same as what's in medical books. Like many other diseases, it can present.
Men who have sex with men are more likely to be found with infectious diseases. It's possible that providers are more willing to send a specimen for testing now that they know more about the disease. We might not be seeing that level of education and willingness to test with other health care providers. We might be missing infections in patient groups.
The CDC said they were ramping up testing at the main labs used by health providers. Sometime in July, the agency wants to make testing simpler.
Changes to testing need to be made immediately. Doctors need to be able to submit samples to the labs that are already doing this testing
She says that time isn't on their side. The outbreak is growing because we are missing links in the transmission chain.
Monkeypox may become a long-term problem in the US.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
