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Covid-infected Biden expected to make move on monkeypox this week..  THE Biden administration is expected to declare monkeypox a health emergency as cases continue to rise in the US, data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows. The latest update by the CDC brings the nation’s total cases to 5,189, just months after the first US case was detected. By making the public health emergency designation, the Department of Health and Human Services could access new money and appoint more personnel to address the issue. The declaration is expected at the end of the week, but the decision is not final, Politico reported

Health officials announced on Friday that the White House has ordered 500,000 more doses of a vaccine believed to be effective against monkeypox. Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response for the Department of Health and Human Services, announced during a press briefing that the U.S. had ordered half a million liquid, frozen doses of the Jynneos smallpox vaccine. MORE.. The order, announced on Friday, is expected to be delivered later this year. O’Connell also stated that the U.S.’s Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) currently has 72,000 doses of Jynneos in its immediate inventory, and an additional 300,000 are expected to arrive in the next few weeks. Apart from Jynneos, the SNS also has more than 100 million doses of the ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine, though health officials noted that there has been a preference for Jynneos. 

  Will monkeypox spread as fast as COVID? “If we all react quickly and we all work together, we will be able to stop this,” said the World Health Organization’s Dr. Rosamund Lewis. “We will be able to stop it before it reaches more vulnerable people and before it establishes itself as a replacement for smallpox.” “It’s really important to do everything we can to try and control it,” Inglesby agreed, “but we’re not going to see the same kinds of early numbers we did as COVID because it’s spreading in different ways.”

​ Patients are contagious until their scabs fall off, the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) says, and the scabs themselves can contain viral material. However, the latest study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, suggests people may be infectious long after their rash has settled. Researchers looked at seven cases of monkeypox in the UK between 2018 and 2021. One of the patients, an unnamed man in his 40s, caught monkeypox in Nigeria before being hospitalised in the UK.

​ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking more than 200 people in Massachusetts who were in contact with the first confirmed monkeypox patient in the U.S., the   New York Post reports . The CDC also released a  level-2 travel alert  over the spread of the virus on Monday, advising people to “practice enhanced precautions,” while warning that the rare disease is fatal in up to 11% of people who become infected. According to the CDC, symptoms include fever of 100.4 degrees or higher, headache, muscle aches, and swollen lymph nodes, followed by a rash. Skin lesions generally develop at the same time and progress through several stages on any part of the body before falling off. Patients are usually ill for two to four weeks. Perhaps the worst part about this entire week of news has been the idea that only people of a certain sexual proclivity will be spreading this virus. Anyone who’s paying attention will know that children are most susceptible. Once...

By now you’ve heard about monkeypox. The virus that provides flu like symptoms, weeks of strife, and finally giant pus filled pox marks on our palms of our hands and faces to signify the virus subsiding. It all sounds pretty horrible, and unfortunately now for people worldwide it is a personal plague. While there are no indications that give us information as to who patient zero is, there’s plenty of rumors about this mysterious monkeypox invasion of our planet. It doesn’t spread like earlier strains, and it certainly seems to be spreading much faster and further than anyone has ever seen before. There was a brief moment in 2003 when monkey pox looked dangerous, as it spread from rats from New Guinea into the Midwest, and 70 or so became sick. There were no reported deaths from that mini outbreak. The current situation seems different however. There are some rumors swirling that right now monkeypox patients seem to be men who have had sex with each other. The working theory is that thi...