With the number of new cases dwindling, San Diego County allowed its monkeypox public health emergency to expire Thursday afternoon.
Declared on Aug. 2 and ratified on Aug. 9 following a similar decision from the state, the decision was explained as a way to help educate the public on the disease and also to push for access to limited vaccine supply as cities across the nation and globe requested additional doses to prevent the virus from spreading.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer, said in a statement that the emergency “is no longer necessary, now that ample testing, treatment and vaccines are available.”
“Although the virus remains in the region, and there is still work to be done in stopping its spread, I am very proud of how the community and our health care partners collaborated in responding to the outbreak and am confident that will continue into the future,” Wooten said.
San Diego County’s weekly new-case totals have plummeted since the first week of August when 57 residents tested positive, falling to a single new case in the first week of November. Weekly case totals have been in the single digits since early October.
The local trendline mimics the national pattern with a peak of 573 new cases detected on Aug. 1, falling to 25 new cases nationwide on Nov. 9, the most recent day for which data was available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The cumulative case count in San Diego stands at 448 with 14 becoming ill enough to require a hospital stay and zero deaths. Nationally, there have been 28,881 cases and 11 deaths. Across the globe, there have been nearly 80,000 cases and 49 deaths in 110 different countries, according to the World Health Organization.
Dr. Cameron Kaiser, deputy public health officer for the county, said that the emergency declaration allowed the county’s public health response to move more quickly by clearing some behind-the-scenes administrative requirements in addition to helping to make sure that the region had an equal shot at in-demand vaccine supply.
But he added that individual organizations serving the region’s LGBTQ residents, who were most directly caught in the crossfire of the outbreak, were also critical to getting the spread of the disease under control.
“I think we’ve done a great job of getting shots into arms and making sure that it’s available for the people who need it, but, ultimately, something like this really comes down to community containment,” Kaiser said.
“Having the community clearly take the message of considered caution to heart — you know, checking with partners, making sure that sick people weren’t showing up to events, staying home when they were ill — all of those factors were critical in bringing the rate of new cases down so precipitously,” Kaiser said.
Dr. Davey Smith, a UC San Diego infectious disease expert who treated many of those who got sick enough to end up in hospital beds, said in an email that the results many are now celebrating also came down to the nature of the virus itself which requires close and generally quite intimate contact to spread.
“I think the vaccines helped, but the rollout was slow and the supply was limited; the county really doesn’t have the infrastructure needed for such a fast and encompassing response,” Smith said. “The widespread education dissemination and harm reduction within the community helped, but really, the virus just burned through the highly-susceptible population and wasn’t infectious enough to go much farther.
“That doesn’t mean that it can’t come back, especially if it mutates to become more infectious.”
