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With a spike in Monkeypox cases in the US, experts have warned that it is on the verge of becoming an entrenched sexually transmitted disease (STD)--like HIV, gonorrhea, and herpes. However, some experts have said that testing and vaccines can still stop the Monkeypox outbreak from taking the root.
So far, 28,000 cases of Monkeypox have been reported in the US. About 99% have been men who reported having sex with other men, health officials say.
Health officials are not sure how fast the virus has spread. They have only limited information about people who have been diagnosed, and they don't know how many infected people might be spreading it unknowingly.
With such huge question marks, predictions about how big the US outbreak will get this summer vary widely, from 13,000 to perhaps more than 10 times that number.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Associated Press that the US government's response is stronger in containing the rare disease and vaccine supplies will soon surge.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals. However, this year more than 15,000 cases have been reported in countries that historically don't see the disease. In the US and Europe, the vast majority of infections have happened in men who have sex with men.
It spreads mainly through skin-to-skin contact, but it can also be transmitted through linens used by someone with monkeypox. Although it's been moving through the population like a sexually transmitted disease. The US health officials noted cases of Monkeypox among two children and at least eight women.
Symptoms like bumps have made Monkeypox infections easy to identify. The other symptoms include fever, body aches, chills, and fatigue. The illness has been relatively mild in many men, and no one has died in the US. But people can be contagious for weeks, and the lesions can be extremely painful.
With monkeypox so rare in the US, many infected men — and their doctors — may have attributed their rashes to some other cause.
Contact tracing was often stymied by infected men who said they did not know the names of all the people they had sex with. Some reported having multiple sexual interactions with strangers.
Monkeypox vaccine
The US government already had a vaccine. The two-dose regimen called Jynneos was licensed in the US in 2019 and recommended last year as a tool against monkeypox.
When the outbreak was first identified in May, US officials had only about 2,000 doses available. The government distributed them but limited the shots to people who were identified through public health investigations as being recently exposed to the virus.
Demand has exceeded supply, with clinics in some cities rapidly running out of vaccine doses and health officials across the country saying said they don't have enough.
As of this week, the US government has distributed more than 191,000 doses, and it has 160,000 more readies. As many as 780,000 doses will become available as early as next week.
The CDC believes 1.5 million US men are considered at high risk for the infection.
If monkeypox becomes an endemic sexually transmitted disease, it will be yet another challenge for health departments and doctors already struggling to keep up with existing STDs.
(With AP inputs)