The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that it has tracked more than 700 cases of smallpox worldwide, including 21 in the United States, while studies show that the disease in This country is expanding.
All monkeypox patients in the United States are recovering or have already recovered, and no deaths from infection have been reported.
“Some cases have been reported in the United States that we know are known to be an infection,” Jennifer McQuiston, a health center official, told reporters by telephone.
“We also have at least one case in the United States that is not travel-related and the patient does not know how he or she became infected,” he added.
Monkey pox is a rare disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, fatigue, and chickenpox rash on the hands and face. An infected person remains contagious until all the blisters have formed and new skin has formed.
The disease is generally native to West and Central Africa, and infections have been reported in Europe since May, and the number of countries monitoring it has increased since then.
On Friday, Canada released the death toll of 77, all in Quebec.
For his part, Raj Punjabi, a White House Department of Health and Biosafety official, said 1,200 vaccines and 100 therapeutic doses had been delivered to the United States, which they would provide to people who came in contact with infected people. .
There are currently two licensed vaccines, ACAM 2000 and Genius, that are primarily designed to fight smallpox.
Although smallpox was eradicated decades ago, the United States has a strategic stockpile of vaccine to use as a biological weapon if the virus is used.
The Gainius vaccine is newer than these two and has fewer side effects than Akam 2000.
“We still have enough vaccines,” Dan O’Connell of the White House Department of Health and Human Services told reporters.
In late May, the Centers for Disease Control announced it had 100 million doses of ACAM2000 and 1,000 doses of Guinness, but O’Connell said Friday that the numbers had changed and refused to provide exact numbers for strategic reasons.
And the Centers for Disease Control approved two antiviral drugs used to treat smallpox infections, Tabax and Sidofovir.
“Anyone can get monkey pox, and we are very careful about the diseases that can spread to any group,” McQuiston said.
Regarding the definition of suspicious cases, McQuiston explained that “anyone who has acne should have new features” and anyone who is very suspicious of related travel or close contact.
Source: Lebanon Debate
