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Monkeypox explained as Niagara County detects first case

Erie County announced two vaccine clinics for this week. As of Monday morning, the appointments were full.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Late last week, the Erie County Department of Health announced two monkeypox vaccination clinics for this week. Monday morning, 2 On Your Side found out all of the appointments were booked.

The United States has almost 2,900 confirmed cases of monkeypox with the first cases confirmed in Erie County last week.

Dr. John Sellick, the Hospital Epidemiologist at Kaleida Health, says one of the most important things to remember is that it's not going to spread the way we saw COVID-19 spread. 

"This does not spread easily by respiratory droplets. Most of the spread is by direct contact with either infections lesions, or perhaps with the clothing or towels or bed sheets of someone who has monkeypox," said Dr. John Sellick.

In the U.S., doctors are seeing monkeypox primarily spread through direct skin-to-skin contact. Dr. Sellick says people most at risk are people who have had multiple close sexual contacts.

Symptoms usually start within three weeks of exposure. The first symptoms might look like other diseases - like a fever or chills. So when should you contact your doctor?

"Certainly, if you start getting skin lesions that look like the ones that, you know, that they've seen on TV and they've seen online, the CDC website has many different pictures of what these look like. They generally don't look like a typical rash," said Dr. John Sellick.

And while there are two vaccines available, Dr. Sellick says doses are relatively limited at the moment. But there is good news for many out there, he says.

"It turns out that those of us old folks have some advantage over you young folks because all of us got smallpox vaccine, and I actually had a second dose when I was in graduate school because of some research I was doing and there's probably some cross-protection there," said Dr. John Sellick.

Finally, Dr. Sellick says to be sure to get information from reliable sources.

Good places to start are the New York State Department of Health and CDC websites. And Monday afternoon, the Niagara County Department of Health reported its first case of monkeypox. They said they interviewed that person and no additional contacts exist.

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