There are early signs monkeypox cases may be peaking in Chicago, New York City and San Francisco, according to health officials.
In Chicago, "we're not seeing the potentially exponential growth that we were seeing early on," Allison Arwady, MD, Chicago's Department of Public Health commissioner, said during an Aug. 23 update. Nearly 800 cases had been confirmed in the city as of Aug. 23, with 113 new cases reported for the week ending Aug. 13. That's down from 138 and 141 new cases from the two weeks before. There's been an increase in testing throughout the same time, indicating a true decline rather than attributing the decline to a drop in testing, Dr. Arwady said.
In New York City, the seven-day average for new cases has fallen from a peak of 72 on July 30, to nine as of Aug. 25. Ashwin Vasan, MD, PhD, the city's health commissioner, during a council meeting attributed early signs of slowing transmission to a rise in people getting vaccinated. San Francisco is seeing similar trends, with new weekly cases hitting a peak of 143 toward the end of July, and the latest data putting that figure at less than five, according to data reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Three more updates:
1. Nearly 17,000 cases have been confirmed in the U.S. as of Aug. 22, CDC data shows. New York, California and Florida continue to bear the brunt of the outbreak.
2. Globally cases have fallen, but the U.S. is the exception, according to The World Health Organization. During an Aug. 25 update, WHO officials said newly reported cases fell by more than 20 percent globally, but new cases increased in the U.S. and Latin America. Europe was the epicenter during the early stages of the outbreak, but that has since shifted. The U.S. accounts for about 36 percent of cases worldwide.
3. Jynneos vaccine dose sparing is causing headaches for local health officials, Politico reported Aug. 24. A number of state health departments said they're only able to divide the vials into three or four doses, rather than five. The FDA earlier this month cleared the way for intradermal fractional doses of the vaccine to be administered in an effort to stretch supplies.