(Photo courtesy of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
There are now nearly two-dozen cases of monkeypox in the U.S., and there’s a new message to doctors from the feds.
There is still just one monkeypox case in Washington – a King County man who recently traveled to a country with other identified cases. Most of the U.S. cases involve international travel, and most are in men who have sex with men, so part of the strategy for preventing spread is messaging for the LGBTQ community.
Captain Jennifer McQuiston with the Centers for Disease Control says because the rash changes over time, it could be easily confused with a different disease, like herpes, so they’re encouraging doctors to test for monkeypox if they have a patient with a new rash, especially if they fit the other epidemiological categories. “There are monkeypox cases, particularly out of Europe that they’re hearing about, that have co-infections with other sexually-transmitted infections,” McQuiston says, “so they should test for monkeypox, even if they think they might have a positive test for another, more common STI.”
Federal health officials also noted that there have been two strains of monkeypox discovered in the U.S., going back to last year, but that most of them are linked with the strain found in Europe.
The CDC says it has sent out vaccines and anti-viral drugs from the national stockpile, which it says has plenty of both to deal with the current outbreak.
The public health risk from monkeypox is still considered low, but there is also a real possibility that there is community spread. That’s why McQuiston says their contact tracing and disease surveillance efforts are so important.
