(CNN) — As the number of cases of monkey pox Amid an ongoing global outbreak, US health officials said Friday they are ramping up testing and contact tracing, as well as access to vaccines and treatments.
As part of those efforts, about 1,200 doses of monkeypox vaccine have been offered in the United States, said Dr. Raj Panjabi, senior director for biodefense and global health security at the White House.
“We want to make sure that people with high-risk exposures have quick access to vaccines, and if they do get sick, they can get the right treatment. To date, we have delivered around 1,200 vaccines,” said Panjabi. “And 100 courses of treatment to eight jurisdictions, and we have more to offer to the states.”
Healthcare workers in Massachusetts treating monkeypox patients were the first to receive vaccinations to protect them against the virus.
In the United States, the two-dose Jynneos vaccine is licensed to prevent smallpox and specifically to prevent monkeypox. Another smallpox vaccine licensed in the US, ACAM2000, can also be used for monkeypox.
To date, more than 120 orthopox PCR tests have been performed in the United States as part of the outbreak follow-up.
“This is only a fraction of what is available,” Panjabi said, adding that 67 labs in 46 states, part of a network known as the Laboratory Response Network, have the “collective capacity” to perform more than 1,000 tests per day. day.
“So what we’re working on now is ensuring that testing capacity is used,” he said. People with symptoms of monkeypox are encouraged to see a health care provider, and providers are urged to get tested if they suspect someone might have monkeypox.
There could be a “community level” spread, warns an official from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (CDC, for its acronym in English).
CDC officials on Friday urged doctors to be on the lookout for possible cases of monkeypox, as the virus could be spreading at a community level.
Twenty cases of monkeypox have been identified in 11 states, as well as one additional case in the US that was infected and tested elsewhere, said Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the Division of Pathology and High Consequence Pathogens. from the CDC.
All patients are in recovery or have recovered, and those who still have a rash are advised to stay home and isolate themselves from others until they fully recover.
“I want to emphasize that this could be happening in other parts of the United States. There could be community-level transmission and that’s why we really want to increase our surveillance efforts,” McQuiston said. “We really want to encourage doctors that if they see a rash and they’re worried it might be monkeypox, they go ahead and do a test.”
He added that the rashes that appear as a result of monkeypox infections in this outbreak may be subtle and easily confused with other types of infections, especially sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and there could be coinfections of monkeypox with STIs. .
McQuiston said the rash from a monkeypox infection usually appears as “deep” and “round” lesions that progress to raised or fluid-filled pustules. It could be confused with other infectious diseases such as herpes or syphilis, he added.
“That said, we don’t want to minimize this condition. The monkeypox virus rash can spread widely throughout the body or occur in sensitive areas such as the genitals,” McQuiston said. “It can be very painful, and some patients have reported needing prescription pain relievers to control that pain. The sores can also cause long-term scarring of the skin.”
Monkeypox variants
An analysis of genetic sequencing data from cases in the United States indicates that two genetically distinct variants of monkeypox may be circulating, McQuiston said.
The genetic sequence data is “certainly interesting from a scientific perspective,” but “determining how long monkeypox virus has been circulating will require the analysis of many more sequences from many more patients to begin to put that puzzle together.” in a clearer way,” he said. “It’s certainly possible that there have been cases of monkeypox in the United States that went unnoticed previously, but not by a large degree.”
He added that the risk to the public is still low and that the finding of cases with different lineages is a “positive sign” that the nation’s surveillance network is working.
CDC researchers and health officials published a report on Friday describing many of the cases of monkeypox in the US, noting that “ongoing research suggests person-to-person community transmission, and the CDC urges health departments, clinicians, and the public to remain vigilant, institute appropriate infection prevention and control measures and notify public health authorities of suspected cases to reduce the spread of disease.”
Among the 17 cases described in the report across nine states, all patients had rashes, 14 of them reported having traveled internationally in the 21 days prior to their symptoms, and all but one identified as men who have sex with men (MSM). . Three were immunocompromised. All patients were adults.
“The high proportion of initial cases diagnosed in this outbreak in people who identify as homosexual, bisexual, or other MSM, could simply reflect an early introduction of monkeypox into interconnected social networks; this finding could also reflect determination bias. due to strong, established relationships between some MSM and clinical providers with strong STI services and extensive knowledge of infectious diseases, including rare conditions,” the CDC researchers wrote in the report.
“However, infections are often not limited to certain geographies or population groups; because close physical contact with infected people can spread monkeypox, anyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, can acquire and spread monkeypox.
Globally, World Health Organization officials say, more countries are reporting monkeypox cases that have not seen the virus before.
“Cases have been reported in 26 countries” where the virus is not endemic, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonoses and technical lead, said during a news conference on Thursday. She added that more than 600 cases have been identified in these countries.
“As surveillance increases, as attention increases, we expect more cases to be identified,” he said. “Many public health outbreak investigations are ongoing.”
Rosamund Lewis, WHO technical lead for monkeypox, said Tuesday that this outbreak is different from the previous ones because they are “seeing cases that appear in a relatively short period of time”.
“What we’re seeing now started as a small cluster of cases, and then the investigation quickly led to the discovery of infections in a cluster of men who have sex with men, and this led to further investigation, so we don’t know yet which one. is the source of the actual outbreak,” Lewis said. “The most important thing now is not to stigmatize.”
–
