The video, which has been shared by numerous Twitter accounts, is often accompanied by claims that the disease has been detected in San Francisco’s sewage and that the World Health Organization recently declared it a global health emergency. Google data seen on Thursday showed a surge in searches for the term “monkeypox” in San Francisco and across California.
Here are the facts: According to the San Francisco Health Department dashboard, there have been zero cases of MPOX in the city in the past seven days. Wastewater detection also shows low incidence of MPOX in the city’s wastewater across both treatment plants.
Concerns over the resurgence of MPOX in San Francisco are being mixed with news of a new subvariant known as lineage 1b that has been associated with higher mortality rates and is spreading in parts of Africa. The first cases of this new variant were recently recorded in Europe. There are no known cases of this new variant in the United States.
“At this time, MPOX cases in San Francisco remain very low. The seven-day average of MPOX cases is currently zero,” Public Health said in a statement. “The San Francisco Health Department strongly recommends and encourages the two-dose vaccine for all people with HIV, all people taking or eligible for HIV PrEP, and all men, transgender, and nonbinary people who have sex with men, transgender, and nonbinary people.”
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, said during previous outbreaks, infections were primarily limited to men who have sex with men, and he warned that the new variant could spread more easily to other populations.
Chin Hong said the mortality rate when the virus spread across the country in 2022 was less than 1% and most of those who died were severely immunocompromised.
Several MPOX outbreaks have been recorded this year in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, but the San Francisco Bay Area was largely unaffected, with no significant increase in cases recorded after San Francisco’s Pride festival, Chin Hong said.
Fewer than 2,000 cases of MPOX occurred in the U.S. last year, but that number is projected to exceed 30,000 in 2022. So far this year, there have been about 700 cases across the U.S. Chin-Hong said he has not personally treated any cases of MPOX at his San Francisco hospital this year.
Chin Hong attributed the decline in case numbers to several factors, including previous infection conferring lifelong immunity, and increased public awareness about risk factors and vaccination.
Still, he said only about 25% of people eligible for the vaccine have received both doses of the vaccine.
“My advice would be to just stay vigilant and don’t panic,” Chin Hong said. “You’re not going to panic from a muni, you’re not going to panic from a doorknob.”
