According to health officials, there are now more than 1,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox in New York City, which proceeds to be a hotspot for the virus.

The US leads the world in confirmed cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As of Monday, there were 3,846 confirmed cases in the US and 18,095 globally, the CDC said. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency on Saturday.

Even as cases in New York have surged, officials have strived to respond with adequate vaccination and testing. At the end of June, as New Yorkers hurried to get a limited supply of monkeypox vaccines, 300,000 doses were sitting in a warehouse in Denmark, the New York Times reported on Monday.

New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, also announced on Monday that the state had reached an agreement with Quest Diagnostics to use a PCR test on people who have a rash consistent with monkeypox.
“The real challenge with testing is that it involves swabbing lesions, which must be present for the test to assess whether the virus is also present,” the New York state health commissioner, Mary Bassett, said in a statement. “Without lesions, testing is not currently possible. And we will continue working to make sure providers know when and how to test for monkeypox.”

Please take necessary precautions as we cannot handle yet another pandemic.

Source: The Guardian