Two Californians diagnosed with mpox may be the first US cases resulting from the local spread of a different version of the virus, health officials said. The Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services this week confirmed the first case through testing at a state lab, reports the AP. Los Angeles County health officials on Thursday reported a second, similar case. The risk to the public is low, officials say. These are not the US first cases of what is known as clade I mpox. But all six previous cases were among international travelers who were believed to have been infected abroad.
Both infected people in California were hospitalized, and are now recovering at home. "At this point in our investigations, we have not identified any association between the two cases," Long Beach health department rep Jennifer Ann Gonzalez said. Long Beach is located in Los Angeles County but has its own city health department. Investigators there say they have not found a close contact who traveled abroad, nor have they confirmed additional cases. A few of the person's close contacts have been given a vaccine, said Nora Balanji, Long Beach's communicable disease coordinator. "We don't have any proof that there has been ongoing community transmission," she said. "It's something we're looking into. That's something we're concerned about."
Mpox—also known as monkeypox—is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that is in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa. A newer form of the clade I virus has been widely transmitted in eastern and central Africa. The World Health Organization declared the situation a public health emergency, but last month it said the problem had waned enough that it was no longer an international emergency. Still, "it's concerning if this virus has come here and now is starting to be transmitted from person to person," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University.
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