WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — There are more than 1,800 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the U.S., 154 of which are in Florida.
Dr. Sheetal Sharma is a physician with CAN Community Health. He said monkeypox is spreading at faster rates through gay, bisexual men and women who have sex with men who have sex with other men.
Sharma said the virus can still spread to anyone who comes in close contact with someone who is infected.
"I don't want to have to think about another possible pandemic," Daniel Kane, who has been concerned about monkeypox, told WPTV.
The Florida Department of Health in Palm Beach County is reporting six cases of monkeypox, but there are 103 cases in neighboring Broward County.
"I think it's really important that we find that balance between, you know, raising the alarm while also doing it in a way that the general population can effectively move against the virus," Kane said.
Kane said Fort Lauderdale is a popular spot among the LGBTQ+ community in Broward County and worries what it means for Palm Beach County as monkeypox spreads through close contact.
"So that's just very concerning to me that people are coming from all over," Kane said. "It could just become a hot spot for the virus."
At CAN Community Health, Sharma said he's been treating patients who have monkeypox.
"So the symptoms are quite intense," he said. "In all the three patients, a week before they actually get the symptoms or the rash, they have a feeling of being unwell, and some of them had a fever of 104."
Sharma said the most visible symptom of monkeypox is a contagious rash, sores or scabs that can appear throughout your body.
"The other way that the virus can be transmitted also, if someone that shares a bed or a towel and those lesions fall from the skin onto the bed and someone uses the towel or the bed, so that person can become infected also," Sharma said.
Sharma said there are vaccines, as well as pills, to help with treatment.
A person is considered infectious until the scabs heal, which could take nearly a month.
"Those lesions might just look like a skin infection, like a bug bite, because it looks like a bug bite, but it's not," Sharma said. "It's the infection itself."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, symptoms of monkeypox can include:
- Fever
- Headache
- Muscle aches and backache
- Swollen lymph nodes
- Chills
- Exhaustion
- Rash that can look like pimples or blisters that appears on the face, inside the mouth, and on other parts of the body, like the hands, feet, chest, genitals or anus.
Anyone who feels he or she may be exposed is urged to call a doctor.
