Florida issues malaria alert as 2 more cases discovered, first locally acquired US cases in 20 years



Florida issued a malaria alert in several counties after two more cases of the mosquito-borne disease were recently discovered. This is the first time in 20 years that there have been locally acquired cases in the United States.

For the week ending on July 1, the Florida Department of Health reported two more locally acquired cases of malaria in Sarasota County. There are currently six total cases in the state, all of which are in Sarasota County, the Miami Herald reported.

The Florida Department of Health issued a mosquito-borne illness advisory for Orange, Polk, and Walton counties, plus a mosquito-borne illness alert for Manatee, Miami-Dade, and Sarasota counties.

Texas recently reported a case of locally acquired malaria.

"The Texas Department of State Health Services said on Friday that it is still aware of only one case of malaria there, but they are still on the lookout for other cases," according to CNN.

Health officials in Texas are monitoring the region's mosquito population for malaria.

These are the first locally acquired malaria cases in the U.S. in the last 20 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"CDC is collaborating with two U.S. state health departments with ongoing investigations of locally acquired mosquito-transmitted Plasmodium vivax malaria cases. There is no evidence to suggest the cases in the two states (Florida and Texas) are related," the CDC stated.

There are roughly 2,000 cases of malaria diagnosed in the U.S. each year, but those cases are almost always cases of Americans or immigrants returning from a country where malaria exists. Approximately 300 American experience severe malaria annually, and up to 10 people die in the United States from the mosquito-borne disease.

Malaria is a disease spread to humans by certain types of mosquitoes in mostly tropical regions. The disease is potentially life-threatening, but it is preventable and curable. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, headaches, fever, sweating, and chills.

The World Health Organization notes:

Malaria mostly spreads to people through the bites of some infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. Blood transfusion and contaminated needles may also transmit malaria. The first symptoms may be mild, similar to many febrile illnesses, and difficulty to recognize as malaria. Left untreated, P. falciparum malaria can progress to severe illness and death within 24 hours.

On July 5, the World Health Organization announced that the first malaria vaccine was to be rolled out in Africa.

"Twelve countries across different regions in Africa are set to receive 18 million doses of the first-ever malaria vaccine over the next two years. The roll out is a critical step forward in the fight against one of the leading causes of death on the continent," read the statement from the WHO, UNICEF, and global vaccine alliance Gavi.

Gavi is a "public-private partnership that helps vaccinate half the world’s children against some of the world’s deadliest diseases."

"The Vaccine Alliance brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private sector partners," the press release stated.

The news release added, "The RTS,S/AS01 vaccine has been administered to more than 1.7 million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi since 2019 and has been shown to be safe and effective, resulting in both a substantial reduction in severe malaria and a fall in child deaths. At least 28 African countries have expressed interest in receiving the malaria vaccine."

The WHO estimated, "Annual global demand for malaria vaccines is estimated at 40–60 million doses by 2026 alone, growing to 80–100 million doses each year by 2030."

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WHO declares monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency after 5 deaths worldwide



The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency.

"I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced on Saturday morning during a briefing in Geneva.

Members of an expert committee met on Thursday to decide if the current monkeypox outbreak should be escalated to a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Of the virologists, vaccinologists, epidemiologists, and health experts, nine voted against declaring monkeypox a PHEIC, and six voted in favor, according to Reuters.

The International Health Regulations Emergency Committee were "resolved by consensus to advise the WHO Director-General that at this stage the outbreak should be determined to not constitute a PHEIC."

"However, the Committee unanimously acknowledged the emergency nature of the event and that controlling the further spread of outbreak requires intense response efforts," according to the WHO. "The Committee advised that the event should be closely monitored and reviewed after a few weeks, once more information about the current unknowns becomes available, to determine if significant changes have occurred that may warrant a reconsideration of their advice."

In the end, Ghebreyesus overrode the committee and declared monkeypox to be a public health emergency of international concern.

According to The Nation's Health website, "A PHEIC gives WHO authority to make formal recommendations to contain an outbreak. The declaration is intended to raise public awareness and can galvanize funding, expertise, and resources from other member nations, said Lawrence Gostin, JD, an international health law professor at Georgetown University."

ABC News noted that this is the seventh event declared a PHEIC by the WHO since 2007, "The other six include the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009; the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2013 to 2015; the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2018 to 2020; the Zika outbreak in 2016; the ongoing spread of poliovirus that started in 2014; and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to the National Library of Medicine."

\u201cNOW - WHO's Tedros: "I have decided that the global #monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern."\u201d
— Disclose.tv (@Disclose.tv) 1658587347

Tedros stated, "Although I’m declaring a public health emergency of international concern, for the moment, this is an outbreak that’s concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners. That means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups."

The World Health Organization director-general added, "Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been more than 16,000 global cases of monkeypox in 2022 in 74 countries.

There have been nearly 3,000 cases in the United States this year, according to the CDC. As of Wednesday, there were 679 cases of monkeypox in New York – 94% of them in New York City, according to state officials.

There have reportedly been a total of five deaths from monkeypox worldwide.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported, "Though the outbreak is heavily concentrated in Europe, the five deaths have been reported in African nations."

The Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority (BARDA) – which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – has purchased a total of 6.9 million monkeypox vaccines through mid-2023.

The WHO noted that monkeypox is a "viral zoonosis (a virus transmitted to humans from animals) with symptoms similar to those seen in the past in smallpox patients, although it is clinically less severe."

"Monkeypox primarily occurs in central and west Africa, often in proximity to tropical rainforests, and has been increasingly appearing in urban areas," the global health agency stated. "Animal hosts include a range of rodents and non-human primates."

Joe Biden says 'everybody should be concerned' about the recent spread of monkeypox that is leaving experts clueless



On Sunday, President Joe Biden said the recent outbreak of monkeypox should concern “everybody,” as it continues to confuse medical experts around the world.

Fox News reported that while speaking with a group of reporters in South Korea before boarding Air Force One for Japan, Biden said, “Everybody should be concerned about [it].”

Biden’s remarks come as large monkeypox outbreaks were reported in Africa, with some cases also being reported in Europe and the U.S.

Biden said, “We’re working on it, hard to figure out what we do.”

There are currently 80 confirmed cases of the disease worldwide and at least 50 suspected cases. The U.S. has only currently confirmed two cases after a man in Massachusetts was diagnosed with the disease and a second man in New York City tested positive for it.

The man from Massachusetts is reported to have traveled to Canada before coming down with the disease.

Monkeypox cases have also been reported in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, and Australia. Reportedly, none of the people coming down with the disease have any travel history to Africa, where the virus is most present.

Oyewale Tomori, a virologist and World Health Organization (WHO) advisory board member, said, “I’m stunned by this. Every day I wake up, and there are more countries infected.”

The virologist noted that the seemingly large presence of monkeypox in Western countries among people who have not traveled to Africa is perplexing.

Tomori added, “This is not the kind of spread we’ve seen in West Africa, so there may be something new happening in the West.”

Christian Happi, the director of the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases, agreed with Tomori that monkeypox’s seemingly spontaneous emergence in the West is perplexing. He said he has “never seen anything like what’s happening in Europe.”

Although it is unlikely someone will die from the disease, WHO data estimates that monkeypox could be fatal for up to one-in-ten people. However, monkeypox’s similarity to smallpox may enable recipients of smallpox vaccines to receive some protection from the virus.

Reportedly, symptoms of monkeypox appear one to two weeks after the initial infection occurs and invovle flu-like symptoms including fever, headaches, and shortness of breath. After about five days of infection, a “skin eruption phase” begins when a rash starts to appear and often spreads to different areas of the infected person’s body.

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US government tracking more than 200 people in 27 states after they possibly came into contact with monkeypox



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are monitoring more than 200 people across 27 states for possible exposure to monkeypox, the New York Post reported, after they were reportedly in contact with a Texas resident who was said to have contracted the disease in Nigeria.

What is this disease?

The disease is related to smallpox, the outlet notes, adding that no additional cases of the disease have been detected at the time of this reporting.

The illness, a disease that can be transmitted through respiratory droplets and bodily fluids, can cause fevers, swollen glands, chills, and pus-filled blisters.

Monkeypox has an incubation period of three to 17 days.

What are the details?

The federal government is working alongside state and local jurisdictions to monitor the 200 people who reportedly came into contact with the Texan.

The Post reported that the unnamed Texas patient "traveled from Lagos, Nigeria, to Dallas, Texas, with a layover in Atlanta on July 8 and 9, nearly a week before being diagnosed with the rare bug."

Those people under health department surveillance include airline passengers, workers, the patient's family members, and others, and will follow up with those people on a daily basis until July 30.

"It is a lot of people. We're in the timeframe where we certainly want to closely monitor people," said Andrea McCollum, epidemiologist for the National Center for Emerging Zoonotic and Infectious Diseases, according to the outlet. "... We define indirect contact as being within six feet of the patient in the absence of an N-95 or any filtering respirator for greater than or equal to three hours."

Cases outside of West Africa are reportedly rare. The United States has not seen a monkeypox outbreak since 2003, when at least 47 confirmed and probable cases were traced to a shipment of exotic animals.