The U.S. saw the largest weekly spike in monkeypox cases of any other country in the last week of July, the World Health Organization said in an Aug. 3 report on the outbreak.
U.S. cases rose to 5,825 during the last week of July, making the U.S. the country with the most reported cases so far in the global outbreak. CDC data shows U.S. cases have since risen to 6,617. As of Aug. 3, more than 25,000 cases globally have been reported to the WHO. In the last week of July, new reported global cases increased by nearly 19 percent.
Of global cases with data available, 98.8 percent were among men. "The ongoing outbreak is largely developing in [men who have sex with men]," the WHO report said. "Generally, severity has been low, with few reported hospitalizations and deaths." The most common symptom is any rash, based on people who reported at least one symptom, according to the report.
Two more updates:
1. Five children have tested positive for monkeypox since July. News of the first two pediatric cases came on July 22. They involved a toddler in California and an infant whose family was visiting Washington, D.C., from another country, CDC officials told The Washington Post. Both of those cases are likely the result of household transmission, and the agency's Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, told the Post both children were doing well during a live interview July 22.
The Long Beach health department on Aug. 2 said a pediatric resident has contracted monkeypox, making it California's second confirmed case in a child. Indiana's health department on July 29 said two children in the state had tested positive.
2. Moderna is considering whether to create an mRNA monkeypox vaccine, ABC News reported Aug. 3. Executives during an investor call on Aug. 3 said the company has started a research program to consider whether to create a monkeypox vaccine, given the growing outbreak and short supply of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine.
"We are beginning to look at what it would take for us to use our platform and to provide a monkeypox vaccine — both [to] intervene in the current epidemic but also to try and address long-term issues of supply in this public health threat," Moderna's President Stephen Hoge, MD, said during the call, according to ABC.