NewsDesk @bactiman63

Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an article in their weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) offering more information on the imported monkeypox case reported in Dallas, Texas last summer.

The report goes over the findings, the public health response and a discussion on this case, the first travel-associated monkeypox case in the United States.

Read at MMWR

Monkeypox is a rare, sometimes life-threatening zoonotic infection that occurs in west and central Africa. It is caused by Monkeypox virus, an orthopoxvirus similar to Variola virus (the causative agent of smallpox) and Vaccinia virus (the live virus component of orthopoxvirus vaccines) and can spread to humans. After 39 years without detection of human disease in Nigeria, an outbreak involving 118 confirmed cases was identified during 2017–2018; sporadic cases continue to occur. During September 2018–May 2021, six unrelated persons traveling from Nigeria received diagnoses of monkeypox in non-African countries: four in the United Kingdom and one each in Israel and Singapore. In July 2021, a man who traveled from Lagos, Nigeria, to Dallas, Texas, became the seventh traveler to a non-African country with diagnosed monkeypox.