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Journalism of Courage
For a world weary of fighting the coronavirus, the monkeypox outbreak poses a key question: Am I at risk?
The answer is reassuring. Most children and adults with healthy immune systems are likely to dodge severe illness, experts said. But there are two high-risk groups.
One comprises infants younger than six months. But they are not yet affected by the current outbreak. And many older adults, the group most likely to succumb to the monkeypox virus, are at least somewhat protected by decades-old smallpox vaccinations, studies suggest.
Vaccinated older adults might become infected but are likely to escape with only mild symptoms.
“The bottom line is that even those that were vaccinated many decades before maintain a very, very high level of antibodies,” said Dr. Luigi Ferrucci, scientific director of the National Institute on Aging.
“Even if they were vaccinated 50 years ago, that protection should still be there,” he said. In the United States, routine immunization for smallpox ceased in 1972.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration’s top adviser on infectious diseases, said it was reasonable to assume that most vaccinated people were still protected, “but durability of protection varies from person to person.”
The monkeypox outbreak has grown to include about 260 confirmed cases and scores more under investigation 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 a history of travel to countries where monkeypox is endemic. That suggests that there may already be some level of community transmission.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, told reporters Thursday that 74 laboratories in 46 states have access to a test that can detect monkeypox, and together they can screen up to 7,000 samples a week. The agency is working to expand that capacity, she said.
Experts emphasized that while monkeypox can be severe and even fatal, the current outbreak is unlikely to swell into a large epidemic.
“We’re lucky to have vaccines and therapeutics,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We do have the ability to stop this virus.”
Monkeypox takes up to 12 days to cause symptoms, giving doctors a window of at least five days after exposure to vaccinate and forestall disease.
Written by Apoorva Mandavilli. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
