A dozen people came down with mpox in Chicago around early May, prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to warn doctors of a potential mpox resurgence.
To those that were watching mpox closely, the increase in U.S. cases wasn’t a surprise. New cases had been recently reported in Europe, and U.S. health officials had been warning that low mpox vaccination rates in many parts of the country left at-risk people particularly vulnerable.
“We’ve been beating the drum around the possibility of an increased number of mpox cases for months,” says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, deputy coordinator of the White House National Mpox Response. “But it wasn’t until the cases in Chicago were reported that people started to say ‘Oh my gosh, we’re at risk for a resurgence.'”
The Chicago outbreak has now grown to more than 30 mpox cases. While those numbers are far lower than last summer, they show that mpox never fully went away.
Health officials say the conditions in the U.S. are ripe for a summer surge, if actions are not taken to avert it.
Low vaccination rates
More than half a million people at risk live in areas with low vaccination rates, according to CDC. This puts them in danger of large, sustained outbreaks that could last for months, if mpox reappears.
During the U.S. outbreak that started last spring, most cases of mpox have been in gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. “This is moving primarily through close skin-to-skin contact, often in the context of sexual activity and often related to sexual activity between men,” Daskalakis says.
Cities such as Jacksonville, Fla., Memphis, Tenn., Cincinnati, Baltimore, Houston and Dallas are in counties where many at risk aren’t vaccinated, according to a CDC analysis. Other cities, including San Francisco, New York, and Washington, D.C., are in places with high vaccination rates, where mpox is more likely to be quickly contained if it resurfaces.