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Hawaii records 1 more mpox case as emergency winds down

After about a month of no new cases of mpox, previously known as monkeypox, the Hawaii Department of Health has added one, bringing the total for the state to 41.

One new case was added to Kauai County on DOH’s dashboard last Friday.

The tally now includes 27 cases in Honolulu, four on Hawaii island, four on Kauai, two on Maui, and four residents outside of the state. The last time a new case was added was about mid-November.

The World Health Organization in late November renamed monkeypox as mpox due to concerns about racism and discrimination. The U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and the Hawaii Department of Health have updated their webpages to reflect this change.

To date, 4,851 doses of the Jynneos vaccine have been administered in Hawaii, including more than 1,800 second doses.

The vaccine is still available at 14 sites statewide, and listed at health.hawaii.gov/docd/disease_listing/mpox.

Current eligibility is limited to Hawaii residents who have had close contact in the last 14 days with a person with a known or suspected mpox infection, those who are gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men, and transgender individuals who have multiple or casual sex partners.

Nationally, the seven-day average of daily mpox cases has declined steeply, from a daily average of above 400 in early August to 5 today.

In the U.S., there have been 29,646 confirmed mpox and orthopoxvirus cases and 20 deaths as of Wednesday, according to CDC. Due to the low number of cases, the federal government plans to let the current mpox emergency declaration expire at the end of January.

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