[MORTARDUDE]

US Reports Possible Person-Person Monkeypox Case

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wisconsin health authorities on Thursday reported the first possible case of someone catching monkeypox from another person, rather than an animal, in the current Midwest outbreak.


Herb Bostrom, a spokesman for Wisconsin's Bureau of
Communicable Diseases, said a healthcare worker whose identity is not being disclosed developed symptoms -- including fever, a cough and a lesion -- late last week.


The diagnosis has not been confirmed but health authorities said the healthworker might have caught the disease from a patient.


More than 60 suspected or confirmed cases of the smallpox-like illness have appeared in the U.S. Midwest in the last two months, marking the first time it has reached the Western Hemisphere.


The illness is likely to have been transmitted to people by prairie dogs sold as pets which in turn had likely been infected by imported African Gambian rats.


While no one has died in the latest outbreak, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has noted the illness is fatal in up to 10 percent of patients in the rain forests of west and central Africa where it is endemic.


While monkeypox -- which was first isolated in 1970 in African primates -- is usually transmitted from animals to people, human-to-human transmission is not uncommon in Africa.


In an effort to contain the U.S. outbreak, the CDC recommended smallpox vaccinations for anyone in contact with human or animal monkeypox sufferers and the U.S. government banned the trade or transport of six species of African rodents and prairie dogs.