6th, 7th suspected monkeypox cases identified in Sacramento County

A sixth and seventh probable case of monkeypox have been identified in Sacramento County, health officials said on Thursday. However, these two additional cases are unrelated to the five initial cases in the county and also are related to travel in the United States, not Europe.The latest two cases come after officials announced the fifth suspected case on June 7 and said nearly three dozen close contacts for those cases had received a vaccine.Contact tracing for the two cases has started. It’s unclear if the two new ones are related to each other and how many people may have been exposed to these cases.But county public health officials said they still believe the risk to the public is low. The five previous cases have been linked to an initial case stemming from someone who had recently traveled to Europe. California’s first case, in Sacramento County, was first reported by a health provider on May 21. | VIDEO BELOW | Sac County public health officer explains contact tracing for monkeypox The county is sharing new cases on a website here.All of those with previously suspected or confirmed monkeypox cases have mild illnesses and are staying at home, Public Health Officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye has said.Thirty close contacts received a monkeypox vaccine, which has to be ordered from the CDC, county officials said last week. Monkeypox symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches, backache, swollen lymph nodes chills, and exhaustion. The patient can also develop a rash days later that often begins in the face and spreads to other parts of the body. It can cause lesions. The illness can last anywhere from two to four weeks. Some people only develop the rash as their first symptom.| RELATED | Doctors discuss facts on monkeypox amid second suspected Sacramento County caseKasirye said that each time someone is identified with the virus it starts the contact tracing process anew, which means it could be another three weeks at least before officials will know that there aren’t any new cases. Monkeypox virus can be transmitted when a person comes into contact with an animal, human or materials like clothing or bedding contaminated with the virus. The virus can enter the body through the broken skin of a lesion, respiratory tract, or mucous membranes, which include the eyes, mouth and nose.Dr. Vanessa Walker with Pulmonary Medicine Associates added that it is possible, in rare cases, to get monkeypox through the inhalation of droplets.”If the person is very sick or they possibly have sores in their mouth and they are speaking to you and you’re in very close contact with them, those large droplets can go into your mouth, your eyes, or something, and then you could get it,” Dr. Walker said.Still, Walker added that it is important for people and their health care providers to be aware of the symptoms.”Just making sure that they’re on the lookout for any rashes that would possibly fit the characteristic of monkeypox,” Walker said. “Anybody who has any type of rash, a new rash for them, it’s not something that they’ve had before — should really just report it to their doctor.”Kasirye has stressed that monkeypox is not as contagious as COVID-19. For example, there needs to be at least three hours of contact with someone in the same space to be considered exposed, she said. Still, monkeypox cases have more than doubled in the last week across the United States. As of Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 84 cases of monkeypox or orthopoxvirus, the family of viruses that include monkeypox, across 18 states as well as Washington, D.C. There were 35 cases on June 7. Learn more here.Monkeypox was first identified in 1958 and mostly is found in Central and West African countries.There have been occasional cases in the U.S., including a 2003 outbreak in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin from imported prairie dogs that had 47 confirmed and probable cases.The World Health Organization is considering whether to name the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern, CNN reported. “I think it’s now clear that there is an unusual situation, meaning even the virus is behaving unusually from how it used to behave in the past,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Tedros said on Tuesday. “But not only that, it’s also affecting more and more countries, and we believe that it needs also some coordinated response because of the geographic spread.”He said there have been more than 1,600 cases confirmed and nearly 1,500 suspected cases reported so far this year from 39 countries.

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