Erie County, N.Y. (WBEN) - Erie County Commissioner of Health, Dr. Gale Burstein gave an update Thursday on where Erie County stands with monkeypox, a communicable disease that has entered the United States.
New York State has the largest number of cases, most of them are in New York City, "The latest report, according to the New York State Health Department, is New York City has 1148 cases, filed by Westchester at 32. So far, in Erie County, we have four confirmed monkeypox cases," said Dr. Burstein.
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Before this recent outbreak spread through physical contact in the United States, originating in Africa, the disease has been rare, "We know that anybody could get infected with monkey pox if they're exposed. However, we're primarily seeing monkeypox cases in the United States are among gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals who are in social and sexual networks of men who have sex with men," Dr. Burstein says.
Erie County is offering the vaccine, JYNNEOS, to people who identify to be members of these networks and while there are limited supply of doses, clinic are now available to administer the shot in Erie County.
"Right now there is a very limited supply of this vaccine. So New York State Health Department is receiving doses from the CDC and they are distributing those doses to areas where they're seeing cases of monkey pox. So we're very fortunate that late last week, we received 600 doses of the monkey pox vaccine from the New York State Health Department and we've partnered with Evergreen Health Services to hold vaccine clinics in one of their spaces, to be able to vaccinate individuals who are at risk of exposure," said Dr. Burstein.
Evergreen has been administering these vaccines at their Prospect Avenue location on August 27th and August 28th. More doses will be made available to the general public in the upcoming weeks.
"We are keeping 50 doses in reserve to be able to to vaccinate people who are known close contact so we don't have to wait to to order more vaccines from the state, that will have them on hand because there is a limited window for the post-exposure prophylaxis. So if a person has a known exposure to monkeypox, if they get the vaccine within four days, there is a good chance that they will not develop any disease and if they can get the vaccine between five and fourteen days after their exposure, there's a good chance they'll just develop minimal symptoms. We have a narrow window, so we want to keep adequate supplies of vaccine on hand to be able to provide the post-exposure prophylaxis," said Dr. Burstein.
"We're anticipating that we'll receive more first doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine from New York State Health Department in the next few weeks and we've been assured that we will receive the second doses to administer to the people who received the first doses this week."
Monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease or infection, but it is commonly seen in genital areas and administered through close skin-to-skin contact, "This is not as contagious as a virus like COVID-19, it is not a sexually transmitted infection. However, it is a sexually associated infection. We believe that many of the transmission is happening through a some type of of sexual contact, although it is not a sexually transmitted infection, researchers have found a virus in different types of secretions, like saliva," said Dr. Burstein.
See the player below for the full remarks of Dr. Gale Burstein.