For a world tired of fighting the coronavirus, the monkeypox epidemic raises a key question: Am I at risk?
The answer is reassuring. Most children and adults with a healthy immune system are likely to avoid serious illness, experts said. But there are two high-risk groups.
One includes babies under six months. But they are not yet affected by the current epidemic. And much older people, the group most likely to succumb to the monkeypox virus, are at least somewhat protected from decades of smallpox vaccinations, studies show.
Vaccinated adults can become infected, but are likely to escape with only mild symptoms.
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“The bottom line is that even those who have been vaccinated many decades before maintain very, very high levels of antibodies,” said Dr. Luigi Ferrucci, research director at the National Institute on Aging.
“Even if they were vaccinated 50 years ago, this protection still needs to be in place,” he said. In the United States, routine smallpox immunization was discontinued in 1972.
Dr Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief infectious disease adviser, said it was reasonable to assume that most vaccinated people were still protected, “but the duration of protection varies from person to person.”
The outbreak of monkeypox has risen to about 260 confirmed cases and dozens more are being investigated in 21 countries.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking nine cases in seven states, not all of which have traveled to countries where monkeypox is endemic. This suggests that there may already be some level of transmission from the community.
Dr Rochelle Valenski, director of the CDC, told reporters on Thursday that 74 laboratories in 46 states have access to a test that can detect monkeypox, and together they can test up to 7,000 samples a week. The agency is working to expand that capacity, she said.
Experts point out that while monkeypox can be severe and even fatal, the current outbreak is unlikely to escalate into a major epidemic.
“We are lucky to have vaccines and therapies,” said Anne Remoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We have the ability to stop this virus.”
Monkeypox takes up to 12 days to cause symptoms, which gives doctors a window of at least five days after exposure to vaccination and prevention of the disease.
Written by Apurva Mandavili. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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