CDC Confirms More Monkeypox Cases Across US

A section of skin tissue, harvested from a lesion on the skin of a monkey, that had been infected with monkeypox virus, is seen at 50X magnification on day four of rash development in 1968. CDC/Handout via Reuters

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on May 26 confirmed nine monkeypox cases across seven U.S. states.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky confirmed the number of cases during a news briefing.

“These cases were suspected by local clinicians. They were identified by local laboratories and triggered local public health action to help with treatment and management of any potential contacts,” Walensky told reporters.

Cases have been found in California, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Utah, Virginia, and Washington state so far, she said. The World Health Organization has said that more than 200 suspected or confirmed cases of the virus have been found in more than a dozen countries.

Walensky, meanwhile, said that monkeypox cases were found in homosexual males, coming after WHO and other agencies said earlier this week that sexual transmission appeared to be linked to the outbreak. They said that two events in Europe were responsible for the spread of the virus.

“A monkeypox outbreak of this scale and scope across the world, it has not been seen before,” Raj Panjabi, the White House’s senior director for global health security, said during the briefing.

This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and spherical immature virions, right, obtained from a sample of human skin associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. Monkeypox, a disease that rarely appears outside Africa, has been identified by European and American health authorities in recent days. Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC via AP

The first monkeypox case in the United States was reported in Massachusetts last week. The disease, which mostly occurs in West and Central Africa, is a viral infection that was first recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, Spanish health authorities reported 25 new cases of monkeypox on May 26, bringing the total tally of infections in one of the main hot spots of the recent outbreak to 84. Spain, England, and Portugal are the three nations with the most cases in the recent outbreak.

Spain’s Health Ministry, which now considers all non-human-origin pox infections as monkeypox after a positive test while before only counting those confirmed by sequencing, also noted 73 suspected cases.

Minister of Health Carolina Darias said on May 25 that Spain would buy monkeypox vaccines as part of the European Union joint vaccine purchases and confirmed that the West African strain, which has a fatality rate in about 1 percent of cases, was the variant detected.

Symptoms of monkeypox include fever, headache, muscle aches, backache, swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, and chills. Lesions may develop within one to five days after the fever symptoms show.

U.S. officials say that smallpox vaccines are effective in preventing the spread of monkeypox.

Reuters contributed to this report.