The World Health Organization declares monkeypox a global health emergency, and state leaders are asking for more vaccine doses. So far 25 monkeypox cases have been reported and State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter said they need more than a thousand vaccine doses to curb a potential outbreak.
“Pre-exposure prophylaxis to people who are at the most risk of monkeypox which right now is men who have sex with men and particularly those who have multiple or anonymous sexual partners,” said Kanter.
In addition to more vaccines, Governor John Bel Edwards said they want to educate residents and visitors about the disease especially ahead of Southern Decadence in New Orleans Labor Day weekend.
“We don’t want anything that we say to unintentionally stigmatize this situation. By the way, there are people who are contracting monkeypox who are not in that category at all, it is not technically a sexually transmitted disease,” said Edwards.
Kanter said testing is much easier now for the disease and clinicians can send samples to the state lab and other reference labs. And with more testing, he said case numbers will increase. In the US there are just under 3,000 cases of monkeypox.
“Typically, people are not infectious unless they are symptomatic, so as opposed to COVID you can’t spread this in an asymptomatic fashion you have to have the lesions and the lesions have to be rather fresh,” said Kanter.
For more information concerning monkeypox and the state dashboard of cases click here.
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