"Should I still be worried about monkeypox?"
The Washington Post interviewed Dr. Anne Rimoin about the effectiveness of monkeypox vaccines in preventing infections.
New monkeypox cases are declining in the United States, a trend public health officials and clinicians attribute to vaccination and changes in behavior.
Eligible individuals who did not receive the monkeypox vaccine were about 14 times more likely to become infected than those who received a first dose of the two-dose vaccine, according to new early data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a promising sign CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said provides “a level of cautious optimism that the vaccine is working as intended.”
The CDC is expanding eligibility for vaccination against a virus that has infected more than 25,000 people in the United States. Despite the decrease in new cases, severe infections have been showing up in recent weeks among men, the majority of them Latino and Black, according to the CDC. The agency issued a health advisory to clinicians Thursday alerting them about “severe manifestations” of disease in men with weak immune systems because they have advanced HIV. In many instances, these patients have had more than 100 lesions.
Faculty Referenced by this Article
Robert J. Kim-Farley, MD, MPH, is a Professor-in-Residence with joint appointments in the Departments of Epidemiology and Community Health Sciences
Dr. Joseph Davey is an infectious disease epidemiologist with over 20 years' experience leading research on HIV/STI services for women and children.
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