OHIO — The Ohio Department of Health is set to give an update at 11 a.m. Thursday on monkeypox and COVID-19 cases.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. confirmed 10,392 cases of monkeypox, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of them, 75 of those cases have been in Ohio.
According to the ODH’s COVID-19 update last week, cases took a dive. The department updates numbers every Thursday. It was the first time in six weeks Ohio documented a drop in COVID cases.
The state reported 27,785 new cases of COVID-19 in last week’s update, which is down 2,091 from the week before. For every week since May, Ohio has been over 10,000 cases per week. Last week, there were a little over 3,900 cases per day, which is a decrease of nearly 300 cases per day from the week prior.
The Biden administration declared monkeypox a public health emergency earlier this month in an effort to slow the growing outbreak. Federal health officials modified its emergency use authorization of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine in an effort to stretch supply fivefold. It allows health providers to administer just 0.1ml of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine intradermally — between layers of the skin — instead of injecting 0.5ml of the vaccine subcutaneously — under the skin — allowing for five doses of the shot in a single vial.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that under the new plan, the 441,000 vaccine doses in the federal stockpile could stretch to 2.2 million. White House monkeypox coordinator Bob Fenton said at the briefing that the 150,000 doses of the vaccine set to arrive in September could be as many as 750,000 — which, with two vaccine doses per person, could vaccinate roughly 365,000 people.
Last week, Ohio received nearly 5,000 vaccines, according to Cleveland Department of Public Health Director Dr. David Margolius. Cuyahoga County received 1,200 doses, Hamilton County got 350 and Franklin County received 850. The vaccine is only being administered to high-risk populations currently.
According to the CDC, monkeypox is a rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus. It’s part of the same family as smallpox. While symptoms may be similar, they are milder than smallpox and monkeypox is rarely fatal.
Symptoms include:
- Fever
- Headache
- Muscle aches and backache
- Swollen lymph nodes
- Chills
- Exhaustion
- A rash that can look like pimples or blisters that appears on the face, inside the mouth and on other parts of the body, such as the hands, feet, chest, genitals or anus
- The rash goes through different stages before healing completely. The illness typically lasts between two to four weeks
Most infections last two to four weeks. It’s transmitted person to person through direct skin-to-skin contact, having contact with an infectious rash, through body fluids, through respiratory secretions, or by inhaling large respiratory droplets or through close contact with body fluids and lesions, as well as bedding and other contaminated materials.
The CDC recommended anyone who has a rash that resembles monkeypox speak to their health care provider.
Spectrum News’ Justin Tasolides contributed to this report.
