I’m going to admit something that is kind of crazy for someone who calls themselves a journalist to admit. I was trying my darndest to ignore the Monkeypox story, praying it would just go away. I know that’s silly. I recall when news stories first started coming out that there was a new health concern we all needed to be aware of, called Monkeypox. Medical experts even gave a list of what the symptoms are for Monkeypox.
I sort of just pretended like I didn’t know there was a new virus out here in the world that we might potentially have to really be concerned about, like Covid, but nothing could be worse than Covid right? Who really knows that answer.
Monkeypox is here in the United States, its here in Philly, and we have to be aware of what it is and how to try and avoid it.
On the heels of learning that President Joe Biden contracted the more concerning strain of Covid, Omicron B.5, we now have a warning from the World Health Organization that they are declaring Monkeypox as a “global health emergency.” The World Health Organization (WHO), Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the announcement July 23rd, after the United Nations health agency’s expert committee couldn’t reach a consensus on whether to apply the highest level of alert to the virus.
Although a global emergency is the organization’s highest alert level, it doesn’t always mean a disease is highly transmissible or lethal. Similar declarations were made for the Zika virus in 2016 in Latin America and the effort to eradicate polio, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Symptoms of the disease begin to appear seven to 14 days after exposure and include fever, muscle aches, exhaustion and a rash that can appear on the body. So far, monkeypox deaths have been reported only in Africa, where a more dangerous version of the virus is spreading.
A WHO emergency committee decided last month that the outbreak did not at that time represent a public health emergency of international concern, Ghebreyesus said in his statement. One month later, see how things change?
A month ago, 3,040 cases had been reported in 47 countries. Since then, the outbreak has grown to more than 16,000 reported cases in more than 70 countries. That’s quite a change in just 30 days.
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