Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 8/11/2022
WESTFIELD – The United States declared monkeypox a public health emergency on Aug. 4 as case counts rise at an increasing pace, but local health officials say they are prepared for when cases begin popping up locally.
As of Aug. 4, 157 cases of monkeypox had been reported in Massachusetts, but so far none have been detected in Westfield or Southwick. After more than two years of the coronavirus pandemic, local health officials say they are prepared if the monkeypox outbreak escalates further.
“We are ready,” said Westfield’s Assistant Health Director Debra Mulvenna.
Though she said she knows that no cases have been reported in Westfield, it has been next to impossible to map where other cases in the state are taking place. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health releases the statewide raw confirmed case counts, but so far has not specified in which communities those cases are being found.
Mulvenna said not including case locations makes it difficult to tell how close it is to Westfield, but withholding the location is a standard practice in the early stages of an outbreak to avoid identifying individual patients when there are very few cases in each community.
Unlike COVID-19, monkeypox does not appear yet to spread readily through the air, and is spreading primarily through intimate and sexual contact. So far, it is reported as most commonly, but not exclusively, spreading among men who have sex with men.
Also unlike the coronavirus, Mulvenna said that monkeypox does not seem to be able to spread until one starts experiencing symptoms. The disease so far has also rarely been fatal, with no reported deaths in the United States in more than 6,600 cases. Mulvenna said that regardless, one would probably still want to avoid getting monkeypox.
“There haven’t been any fatalities yet, but it isn’t a pleasant illness,” said Mulvenna. “Believe it or not, it isn’t related to chickenpox, but it acts like it.”
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, monkeypox symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, exhaustion and respiratory symptoms. The most telling symptom, however, is a rash that can consist of scabs or painful blisters that can be located anywhere on the body, but often appear near one’s genitals.
Schools will be back in session in just a few weeks, but Mulvenna said that she is not concerned about the spread of monkeypox in Westfield’s schools. It appears mostly to spread through prolonged skin-to-skin contact with an infected person’s rash or sores, and Mulvenna said that a student exhibiting monkeypox symptoms would very likely not be in school anyway.
To draw further distinction from the early days of COVID-19, there is already a vaccine for monkeypox, though there is currently a shortfall of doses available nationally. Mulvenna said anyone who suspects exposure and infection with monkeypox can seek out a vaccine before symptoms begin to show, to at least lessen the severity of the illness if not prevent it altogether.
While much attention is being paid to monkeypox, the coronavirus pandemic still lingers. Mulvenna said that the most recent wave of COVID-19 cases, driven by the BA.5 variant, appears to be subsiding somewhat, based on the limited data available to the local Health Department. The wave peaked the week of July 21 when Westfield and Southwick had 14-day laboratory confirmed case counts of 150 and 33, respectively.
In the state’s report from Aug. 4, Westfield had 121 and Southwick had 29 cases in the previous two weeks, and that number had fallen for the second straight week. The data do not include any cases detected with at-home test kits, so numbers released by the state do not reflect the real total, but can still act as a gauge for whether cases are rising or falling.
COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have remained low, but Mulvenna said that at least one person was hospitalized and at least one Westfield resident died of COVID-19 within the past month.