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Monkeypox: Some officials now say elimination is unlikely in the US


NEWYORK –

Some US health officials admit that monkeypox may not be going away anytime soon.

The spread of the disease is slowing, but the virus is so widespread that it can be difficult to eradicate, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That conclusion was made in a recent CDC report, and released Friday by Marc Lipsitch, chief scientific officer of the agency’s disease forecasting center.

Lipsitch is hesitant to say that monkeypox will be here forever, but he says it will be a continuing threat for the next few years.

“It’s in as many geographic locations in the country” as it is in other countries, Lipsitch told The Associated Press. “There is no clear path in our minds to complete domestic elimination.”

The virus is mainly spread among gay and bisexual men, although health officials continue to stress that anyone can be infected. It’s important that people at risk take steps to stop the spread and vaccination efforts continue, says Lipsitch.

The CDC report has some good news: The outbreak in the US appears to have peaked in early August. The average daily number of cases reported – less than 150 – is about a third of what it was reported in mid-summer, and officials expect the decline to continue for at least a few days. next week.

The good news, Lipsitch said, is increased vaccination, prudent behavior among those at risk, and immunity derived from infection in the populations most at risk.

Dr Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, agrees that it is unlikely that the spread of monkeypox will stop in the US anytime soon, but he said it is still possible in the long term. .

He said: “If domestic transmission is stopped, infections can still continue if people contract the virus while traveling internationally. But the descending circumstances make it seem like “we’ve turned a real corner.”

“Ongoing efforts are succeeding and need to be continued, if not intensified,” he said.

With the number of cases falling, it is a good time for local health departments to embark on in-depth contact tracing to try to stop the chains of transmission, he said.

Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through the bite of rodents or small animals, but it is not considered a contagious disease among people. people until May, when the infection appeared in Europe and the US.

There have been more than 67,000 cases reported in countries that have never seen smallpox in monkeys. The US has the most infections of any country – more than 25,600. One death in the US has been attributed to monkeypox.

More than 97% of cases in the US are men. The majority were men who said they had recently had sex with other men.

Officials said that although cases have dropped, the proportion of new cases with information about recent sex has also decreased. That causes a growing blind spot on how the virus can spread, Lipsitch noted.

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