Late last year, with cases at a trickle, New York City wound down its mpox emergency response. Health officials stopped posting updates about cases.
Vaccination vans stopped appearing outside nightclubs. The number of people being vaccinated against the disease flatlined. But the mpox virus — a close relative to smallpox whose name was changed from monkeypox last year — never completely disappeared.
Now, a year after a global mpox outbreak began and just as Pride celebrations and the summer party season are set to start, public health authorities are warning of a risk of new outbreaks, nationally and in New York City, primarily among men who have sex with men.
Since peaking in the city late last July at almost 100 cases a day, the disease has continued to circulate at much lower levels.