Monkeypox fear grips America
2003-06-09 22:42
Washington - Thirty-three people in three US states are suspected of being infected with monkeypox, a potentially fatal smallpox-like virus, US health authorities said on Monday.
The infection is feared to have jumped from pet prairie dogs to humans. The dogs were believed infected by a Gambian rat.
Seven people have been hospitalized from among "33 cases of rash illness ... under investigation by three midwest states," Steve Ostroff of the government's Centers for Disease Control (CDC) told reporters.
All of the suspect cases had contact with sick prairie dogs.
Ostroff, deputy director of the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases said that so far "very few of these cases have been confirmed as monkeypox" and there have been no fatalities. Health authorities have seen "no information about person to person transmission."
Ostroff said that a skin rash is "fairly characteristic of monkeypox," and that in the majority of the cases under investigation people had "experienced fever."
No one has died from the disease and the patients - who are aged between four and 48-years-old - are at various stages of recovery, he said.
On Sunday, the CDC urged hospitals and clinics to watch for new cases of monkeypox.
Those affected fell ill after handling prairie dogs sold as pets.
The outbreak is the first documented case of monkeypox in the western hemisphere. The virus is usually found only in African rainforests.
Cases began to appear in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana in mid-May.
Officials became aware of the multiple cases on June 4 and sent tissue samples from sick prairie dogs to the CDC, which confirmed monkeypox or something similar.
The patients reported fever, sweats, chills, cough and a blistering rash. All are recovering, although four of the patients are in hospital.
Officials believe a shipment of prairie dogs that included a sick Gambian rat may be the source of the infection.
Sold as exotic pets in the United States, Gambian rats are native to Africa and known to be susceptible to monkeypox.
In Africa cases of animals transmitting it to humans have occurred in central and West Africa.
Monkeypox belongs to the orthopox family of viruses but is less contagious than smallpox. Smallpox vaccine appears to be effective against monkeypox in 85% of cases, according to a study carried out in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996-97.
The mortality rate in Africa among people who have not been vaccinated is between one and 10% of infected cases, compared with 30% for smallpox.
Monkeypox has an incubation period of up to 12 days.
In February 1997, the CDC recorded 88 human cases of it in one year in 12 villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The presence of the virus was detected in wild animals, mainly in squirrels, which appeared to constitute the main source of the illness.