Adding insult to injury as we desperately and unsuccessfully – so far – hope to be free of COVID-19, we now learn that we also have three cases of monkeypox confirmed in the Chattanooga area, according to a Tuesday announcement from the Hamilton County Health Department.
Spreading across the U.S. since May, a health department news release describes monkeypox as “a rare but potentially serious viral illness that typically begins with flu-like illness and swelling of the lymph nodes and progresses to a rash on the face and body.” It belongs to the same virus family as smallpox, but its symptoms are milder. An infection can last up to four weeks. As of Tuesday, the U.S. had 5,811 confirmed cases, with almost a quarter of them in New York, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, a rising number of counties in the country and in the Chattanooga region are now at high risk for COVID-19 as omicron subvariant BA.5 continues to drive a nationwide surge in cases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Our area’s high-risk counties as of Monday included Bradley, Coffee, Franklin, Grundy, McMinn, Meigs, Polk and Rhea counties in Tennessee, Chattooga and Gordon counties in Georgia and DeKalb and Jackson counties in Alabama. Two weeks ago, only nine area counties were considered high risk, according to the CDC.
Hamilton County was considered at high risk for COVID last week, but has been downgraded this week to a medium risk, though case reports to the Hamilton County Health Department remain near their highest level since February. That was when the initial omicron wave resulted in an all-time-record number of reported cases.