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Two mpox in cases California Under investigation as potentially the first example of local transmission of a specific version of virus Within the United States, health officials have announced.
The Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services confirmed one case this week, followed by a second similar case Infection Reported by Los Angeles County officials. While the last six U.S. cases Clade I MPOX was linked to international travelers infected abroad, these new diagnoses suggest domestic spread.
Officials say the risk to the public is low. Both infected people in California were hospitalized, and are now recovering at home. Officials declined to provide other details.
Long Beach is located in Los Angeles County, but has its own city health department. Investigators there say they have not found any close contacts who have traveled abroad, nor have they confirmed additional cases. Some close contacts of the person have been vaccinated, said Nora Balanji, the Long Beach department’s communicable diseases coordinator.
“We have no evidence that community transmission is going on,” he said. “It’s something we’re looking into. It’s something we’re concerned about.”
MPOX – also known as monkeypox – This is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that is in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic to some parts of Africa.
Mild symptoms may include fever, chills, and body aches. In more severe cases, people may have sores on their face, arms, chest, and genitals.
One variant of the virus – called Clade II – was the source of an international health crisis in 2022, when infections surged in dozens of countries, mostly among men who have sex with men. At one point, the US was averaging about 500 cases per day.
Infections were rarely fatal, but many people suffered painful skin lesions for weeks. Those outbreaks subsided later that year, thanks in part to the vaccine against mpox made by Zynnios.
The second variant – known as Clade I – can similarly spread through sex, but also through other forms of contact. In Africa it has infected a wide range of people, including children.
A new variant of the clade I virus has spread widely in eastern and central Africa. The World Health Organization declared the situation a public health emergency, but last month it said the problem had subsided enough that it was no longer an international emergency.
Still, “it is worrying whether this virus has come here and is now starting to spread from person to person,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University.
Reports of cases come amid the federal government shutdown and the layoff of hundreds of employees at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the agency typically involved in responding.
Balanji said some CDC experts are available to talk to his department about the situation. But Schaffner said that “the longer the shutdown, the worse public health responses to any outbreak will be.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services referred questions to local health officials.