Mpox less likely to lead school closures, say US public health experts
Asif Reporter
The WHO has recently categorised mpox as a global health emergency but the physicians and the public health experts in the US have ruled out chances of school shut down due to mpox, the local media stated.
While politicians squabble over whether or not mpox is a possibility for outbreak in the American community and whether or not it will disrupt school, health officials within the US federal government suggest that mpox cases will not result in coronavirus-style school closures.
‘This is not like COVID, where there’s nothing visible on somebody,’ NBC quoted Christina Hutson, head of the poxvirus and rabies branch at the Atlanta-based US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),’ as saying.
She further explained that with mpox, “you can even see the lesions on somebody, as long as you are not directly touching this person, you cannot get infected,” she said.
Although the outbreak of mpox is worrisome in Africa, schools in the US will not even shut down if mpox emerges in the country according to Carlos del Rio, a professor of medicine and an infectious disease specialist at Emory University in Atlanta.
“The approach to this virus”, he said of mpox, “is very different. ”
According to Shelby County Health Department, director and health officer of Shelby County, Memphis – Tennessee, Michelle Taylor, mpox is not airborne.
Taylor further noted that there is no proof that virus changes or disperse in a manner which would trigger school closure.
“Based on the science, I just don’t believe that’s going to happen,” he added.
The WHO secretary general said in a statement on Friday that new mpox virus is not an incurable disease and can be stopped and controlled.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the confirmed cases of mpox have been reported as more than a hundred thousand to the organization since the start of the outbreak in 2022 and registered a spike particularly in Africa.
