Officials in New York on Saturday declared a public health emergency due to the spread of the monkeypox virus, calling the city “the epicenter” of the outbreak.
The announcement by New York Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Department of Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said that as many as 150,000 city residents could be at risk of infection. The declaration would allow officials to issue emergency orders under the city health code and amend code provisions to implement measures to help slow the spread.
In the past two days, New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state disaster emergency declaration and the New York State Department of Health called monkeypox an “imminent threat to public health.”
Photo: AFP
New York had recorded 1,345 cases as of Friday, data compiled by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed. California had the second-most, with 799.
“We will continue to work with our federal partners to secure more [vaccine] doses as soon as they become available,” Adams and Vasan said in the statement. “This outbreak must be met with urgency, action and resources, both nationally and globally, and this declaration of a public health emergency reflects the seriousness of the moment.”
The WHO declared monkeypox a global health emergency on Saturday last week and San Francisco’s mayor on Thursday announced a state of emergency over the growing number of cases.
The once-rare disease has been established in parts of central and west Africa for decades, but was not known to spark large outbreaks beyond the continent or to spread widely among people until May, when authorities detected dozens of epidemics in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
To date, there have been more than 22,000 monkeypox cases reported in nearly 80 countries, with about 75 suspected deaths in Africa, mostly in Nigeria and Congo.
On Friday, Brazil and Spain reported deaths linked to monkeypox, the first reported outside Africa. Spain reported a second monkeypox death on Saturday.
The Spanish Ministry of Health said that both fatalities were young men.
On Friday, the ministry reported that 4,298 people were infected with the virus, making it the leading European country for monkeypox cases. Of that total, 3,500 cases were of men who had had sex with other men. Only 64 were women.
The ministry said that 120 have needed hospital attention.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
RSS