Smallpox monkeys confirmed in Massachusetts; The first case in the US was discovered in 2022

BOSTAN – Massachusetts health officials said Wednesday they have confirmed a case of monkeypox, the first case of a rare virus found in the United States in 2022.

The Department of Public Health reported that the infection was found in an adult male who recently traveled to Canada. It is said that this case does not pose a risk to the general public.

The man, a resident of Massachusetts, has been in Massachusetts Hospital since May 12. He is in isolation at the hospital and is in stable condition. The hospital said that because the disease is very rare, it took six days to diagnose him using the CDC.

DPH is working to identify people who could have come in contact with the man when he was contagious.

Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital said the patient had traveled to Canada but had no history of traveling to areas with high monkey levels.

DPH said monkeypox can resemble early flu-like symptoms and turn into lesions that spread throughout the body. Most infections last two to four weeks. However, health officials said that monkeypox did not spread so easily, and the reason they pay so much attention to the case is that it was not transmitted through contact with animals or through travel with high cases of monkeys, but through contact between man. .

“Right now, human-to-human transmission has really happened through close contact, generally speaking. And it’s close contact through breathing drops and prolonged face-to-face contact, as well as direct contact through damage or in direct contact through contaminated bedding or, like, clothing contaminated with lesions, ”said Dr. Sarimer Sanchez, director of the Infectious Diseases Bureau of the Boston Health Commission.

The CDC is tracking several clusters of monkeypox that have been reported in the last two weeks in Portugal, Spain and the UK. These countries do not usually report monkeypox.

According to the CDC, “it is unclear how people in these clusters have been affected by monkeypox, but cases involve individuals who identify themselves as men who have sex with men.”

The United States has discovered two cases of monkeypox in Texas and Maryland in 2021 from people who recently traveled to Nigeria.