NEW YORK — Less than six months ago, mpox was an exploding health crisis. What had been an obscure disease from Africa was ripping through European and U.S. gay communities. Precious doses of an unproven vaccine were in short supply. International officials declared health emergencies.
People are also reading… "It's a mixed story" in which some things could have gone better but others went well, said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Cases soar, then fallMpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that's in the same family as the one that causes smallpox.
Soon after, the outbreak began diminishing. The daily average of newly reported U.S. cases went from nearly 500 in August to about 100 in October. Now, there are fewer than five new U.S. cases per day. VaccinationsHealth officials caught an early break: An existing two-dose vaccine named Jynneos, developed to fight smallpox, was also approved for use against the monkeypox.
Some in the public health community worried that it was a big decision based on a small amount of research — a single 2015 study. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since then has confirmed there was no difference in vaccine performance between the two methods. "The success was really due to grassroots activities," said Amira Roess, a George Mason University professor of epidemiology and global health. Leaders in the gay community"took it upon themselves to step in when the government response was really lacking" in a way that recalled what happened during the plodding government response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, she said.
The number of new infections may have been limited by increases in infection-acquired immunity in the men active in the social networks that fueled the outbreak, CDC scientists said in a recent report.
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