Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.

Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading.

Thank you for reading! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.

This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and spherical immature virions, right, obtained from a sample of human skin associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. (Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC via AP, File)

This 2003 electron microscope image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions, left, and spherical immature virions, right, obtained from a sample of human skin associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. (Cynthia S. Goldsmith, Russell Regner/CDC via AP, File)

The international monkeypox outbreak has been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization. While there have been some cases in the St. Louis area, there have been no reported cases in Franklin County.

Monkeypox is a virus in the same family as smallpox and chickenpox. It causes blistering rashes on the skin, fever, chills and respiratory symptoms like sore throat, nasal congestion and coughing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Twenty cases of monkeypox have been detected in Missouri, most of which were in the St. Louis area, according to CDC data.

Across the U.S., 11,177 cases have been confirmed.

“There is very little concern to the average citizen in Washington or Franklin County currently,” said Dr. Ann-Elizabeth Mohart, chief medical officer at Mercy Hospital Washington. “The average person in Washington right now doesn’t really need to change their behavior or their level of concern.”

Mohart said the risk of mortality and severe symptoms is higher for the immunocompromised, young children and pregnant women. However, overall, the risk of mortality is low. She said the fatality rate for the strain currently circulating in the U.S. is “well below 10 percent, probably less than 1 percent.”

Mohart said the virus spreads similarly to how COVID-19 does, but is not as contagious.

“It can be spread in droplets in the air, it can be spread on surfaces and it can be spread through direct contact,” Mohart said. “But it requires much more intimate and prolonged contact to actually transmit between people than COVID does.”

She said the majority of transmission is happening through skin-to-skin contact.

Mohart said if someone has been exposed to the virus, they should contact their health care provider who can get them tested, which is done by swabbing the scabs or drawing blood. Mohart said the scab swab was much more accurate.

More importantly, she said, the health care provider could help the patient get a vaccine, which was developed for smallpox but protects against the entire family of viruses. The vaccine, which decreases the chance of infection and the chance of severe and painful symptoms, works best within four days of exposure. Patients will need to qualify for both the test and vaccine based on symptoms and risk level.

The St. Louis County Department of Public Health announced in a press release earlier this month that it would be the region’s monkeypox vaccine hub and would distribute the vaccine. It listed St. Louis, St. Charles and Jefferson counties, as well as the city of St. Louis, as areas where it is distributing the vaccine, but said that it is ready to distribute the vaccine to other parts of the state as needed.

Mohart emphasized that monkeypox is not an STD. However, she said the majority of cases in the U.S. are among men who have intercourse with other men, particularly men with multiple different partners, and that’s due to the large amount of prolonged physical contact during intercourse.

“There is a history with diseases like this, the most classic being HIV, that there could be a stigma and we don’t embrace the care and the diagnosis of this aggressively because there is a stigma,” she said. “So we would want to make sure that everyone who is concerned that they have this feels safe and comfortable accessing health care and getting the treatment that they need.”

“Anytime there is an infection anywhere, there could be an infection everywhere, so it will probably ultimately end up coming here,” Mohart said. “Just like we did with COVID, we go day by day.”

Reports are coming in from across the country of a few isolated outbreaks of various infectious diseases, but health officials in Franklin Cou…

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos.

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.