THE NEW YORK TIMES – Late last year, with cases at a trickle, New York City wound down its mpox emergency response. Health officials stopped posting updates about cases.
Vaccination vans stopped appearing outside nightclubs. The number of people being vaccinated against the disease flatlined.
But the mpox virus — a close relative to smallpox whose name was changed from monkeypox last year — never completely disappeared.
Now, a year after a global mpox outbreak began and just as Pride celebrations and the summer party season are set to start, public health authorities are warning of a risk of new outbreaks, nationally and in New York City, primarily among men who have sex with men.
Since peaking in the city late last July at almost 100 cases a day, the disease has continued to circulate at much lower levels.
“The 2022 monkeypox outbreak is associated with sexual and intimate contact. Survey data suggest that gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM), who have been disproportionately affected, are reducing one-time partnerships.” – CDC
Health officials stopped posting case information on the city’s website at the end of last year.
The health department said there had been at least 39 mpox cases in New York so far this year, including 20 in January and two in the past month.
Most people who were diagnosed with the disease recently and interviewed did not report having traveled, officials said, suggesting the disease is spreading locally.
Epidemiologists are also monitoring a cluster of cases spreading among vaccinated and unvaccinated people in Chicago, raising concern that the protection provided by vaccination may be waning.
New York City has had one of the nation’s highest vaccination rates among people at greatest risk for getting the disease, but about half of those who have been vaccinated received only one dose of the two-dose vaccine, leaving many vulnerable to infection …
“Without renewed prevention efforts, especially vaccination, we are definitely at risk of a resurgence, in fact, a substantial risk of resurgence of mpox.” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, White House National Mpox Response Deputy Coordinator
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