Don’t shun Pride parades because of monkeypox, says WHO
Related: Is Walmart really selling “twink-flavored” ice cream for Pride?“It’s important that people who want to go out and celebrate gay pride, LGBTQ+ pride, to continue to go and plan to do so,” said Andy Seale, a strategies adviser in the WHO Department of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections Programmes, at a press briefing.“There is no specific transmission route that we need to be worried about,” he said. “It really is connected to the fact there have been a couple of events that have perhaps amplified the current outbreak.”Seale also wanted to downplay reporting that framed the monkeypox outbreak as a disease impacting just gay men.“Given this is not a gay disease, the transmission routes are common to everybody,” Seale said. “The advice is pretty much the same for all people.”Seale said that pride parades are usually outdoors, while monkeypox transmission has more recently been linked to indoor events and nightclubs.“We don’t see any real reason to be concerned about enhanced likelihood of transmission in those contexts, because the parties that we’ve been referring to have perhaps been more in enclosed spaces,” he said.Related: Monkeypox: Third suspected case in U.S.
investigated in Fort LauderdaleAt the time of writing, 14 cases of monkeypox have now been identified across eight states in the US.
Over the weekend, two were identified in California, one in Colorado, and one in New York.Of the two cases in California, health officials said the second was a “close contact” of the first, who had been diagnosed three days earlier.
This suggests a case of human-to-human transmission.Worldwide, monkeypox has now been identified in 24 countries outside of West and Central Africa (where cases are.
