Odds low for catching monkeypox in Santa Barbara County | Health & Fitness
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Unless you fall into a high-risk group, the odds of catching monkeypox in Santa Barbara County are low — but not impossible, as five cases had been confirmed as of Monday, according to a report from the county public health officer.
“It is way less contagious than COVID or even smallpox,” Dr. Henning Ansorg told the Board of Supervisors in an update Tuesday.
In addition to the five confirmed cases, Ansorg said the county is pending results from tests on four other potential cases and has evaluated 24 suspected cases as well as 40 people who had contact with the confirmed cases.
In addition, 35 doses of Jynneos vaccine have been administered to those who were exposed to someone with the virus, leaving the county with 220 regular doses for people in high-risk groups and those who have been exposed.
However, Ansorg said the US Food and Drug Administration has given emergency authorization to use one-fifth doses of the drug administered intradermally, or into the skin, which extends the county’s supply to 1,100 doses.
He said the vaccine is being distributed to infectious disease clinics, and the county is planning some events to vaccinate those at risk on a large scale.
“We are constantly bugging the state to give us more vaccines,” Ansorg said, adding, “I don’t want to see them in the freezer but in the body.”
Fortunately, he said, those who were vaccinated against smallpox — a program the United States dropped in 1972 — will be immune to MPox, the term he said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is using now instead of monkeypox to “avoid any stigma .”
“Even if you were born in the ’60s, you should have at least partial immunity,” Ansorg said.
The CDC has reported MPox misinformation is rampant on social media sites, especially about how it is spread.
Ansorg said the virus is not spread through casual conversations, nor is it transmitted by walking past someone who has the disease, like in a grocery store.
In fact, he said, someone with MPox could go to the store as long as they cover their lesions with their clothing and don’t have physical contact with others.
The virus is spread through prolonged skin-to-skin contact, particularly with someone who has lesions, and from droplets inhaled during close face-to-face contact in such activities as kissing and snuggling.
It can also be spread by contact with bedding that hasn’t been washed since someone with the disease has slept in it, and people can transmit it to their dogs, according to a report issued this week.
The incubation period for MPox is seven to 14 days, during which time it is not contagious. Then it causes flulike symptoms that include fever, headache, muscle ache and fatigue, the CDC said.
After the fever, a patient develops a rash that can look like pimples, may be itchy and will go through several stages until becoming scabs that eventually fall off after two to four weeks, according to the CDC.
But a person who has the disease is infectious from the onset of symptoms until the last scab falls off, Ansorg said.
The severity of an infection depends on the state of an individual’s health and strength of the person’s immune system, but he said for most people, MPox means discomfort that goes away over the course of two to three weeks.
“People who die from this have extra low immune levels,” Ansorg said.
Asked about polio virus recently found in wastewater in New York City, Ansorg advised people who have been orally vaccinated against polio to get booster shots and for parents to have their children vaccinated.
“It is unfortunate so many parents decline to get their children vaccinated against polio these days,” he said.
Odds low for catching monkeypox in Santa Barbara County | Health & Fitness