Monkeypox Cases Continue To Spread Across the U.S. as Three States Declare Emergencies

New York, Illinois, and California have all declared states of emergency over the continued spread of monkeypox among the populace, though it’s not entirely clear the extent these declarations will help given the current lack of access to vaccines.

Total monkeypox infections in the U.S. have climbed to more than 5,800 (the chart on the right is slightly off but shows the speed of transmission) and have now been detected in every state except for Montana and Wyoming. While those numbers are still very low given the total population of the U.S., there were just around 800 infections less than a month ago. Testing then was still very limited, so it’s possible that many of these new diagnoses were people who had already been infected but didn’t yet know.

So far, according to health officials, the spread still appears to remain among men who have sex with other men. In California, 98 percent of infections have been identified among these men, according to state officials. While monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease and can be spread through physical contact with the lesions and rashes associated with it (and through materials like clothing and bedding), the strain that has spread across Europe and into the U.S. appears, for now, resistant to spread through casual contact. Most of the infections are being spread through sexual partners.

Monkeypox is often painful, but the version spreading in the U.S. has not been fatal thus far. Two deaths in Spain and one in Brazil just recently announced are believed to be the first outside of Africa. The man who died in Brazil also reportedly had lymphoma and a weakened immune system.

Even if the U.S. can’t seem to contain the virus, the narrowness of the spread does make it more possible to identify communities where spread is likely and to target those at most risk. New York has seen the most infections, and California and Illinois both have significant populations of gay and bisexual men in the big cities. Health officials are attempting to prioritize vaccination for sexually active men in these high-risk categories.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been quick to use his broad emergency authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic to seize a lot of power for himself and control the entire state’s response. California law gives the governor extremely broad (arguably overly broad) po