Patient may have spread pox to nurse

Patrice M. Skonieczny, infection control coordinator at St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee, said a nurse developed monkeypox symptoms after caring for a patient with a possible case of the disease.

In another case, Dr. John Melski, a dermatologist at Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, said a medical assistant is suspected of getting the disease after helping treat a 3-year-old girl May 22. The girl was later diagnosed with monkeypox.

Monkeypox is known to spread from person to person in Africa, where it is native. Two-thirds of cases in a mid-'90s outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo possibly resulted from person-to-person contact, health officials say.

"We need to expect that (human-to-human transmission) can happen here," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner says. "That's all the more reason to follow proper infection-control practices in the hospital and at home, for people who are recovering from the disease."

The report comes just a day after federal health officials took strong steps to control the first outbreak of the rare disease in the USA. They halted the importation of African rodents and banned the sale of prairie dogs and other animals that might carry monkeypox. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also advised states to offer smallpox vaccination to anyone at risk of infection. The vaccine is 85% effective against monkeypox, a weaker relative of the smallpox virus.

So far, 62 cases are under investigation: 21 in Wisconsin, 12 in Illinois, 28 in Indiana and one in New Jersey. All have been linked to exposure to infected animals. There have been no deaths.

Health officials believe that the outbreak began with infected Gambian giant pouched rats shipped in April from Ghana to a wildlife importer in Texas, who sold them to an Illinois distributor. The shipment contained about 800 small animals of nine species "that may have been the actual source of introduction of monkeypox," CDC reported.

Investigators are scrambling to find infected animals in at least 15 states: Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and South Carolina.

CDC experts have begun testing specimens from the Wisconsin nurse — who is in isolation at home — to determine whether she has the disease, said Herb Bostrom, director of the Wisconsin Bureau of Communicable Diseases. Her diagnosis is in doubt partly because her symptoms don't match the usual pattern. Unlike most patients, who have pustules all over their bodies, she suffered from respiratory symptoms with one lesion on her hand.

"It's a suspect case," Bostrom said. "We're not sure, but we're not taking any chances."

With wire reports.