Monkeypox in San Francisco: Viral Video Debunked

The video, shared by a number of Twitter accounts, is often accompanied by statements that the disease has been detected in San Francisco’s sewage and that the World Health Organization recently declared it a global health emergency. Google data viewed Thursday shows a spike in search traffic for the term “monkeypox” in San Francisco and across California.

Here are the facts: According to a San Francisco Health Department dashboard, there have been zero cases of MPOX in the city over the past seven days. Wastewater testing also shows a low presence of MPOX in the city’s wastewater at both treatment plants. The health department was contacted for comment but did not respond by press time.

Concerns about a resurgence of Mpox in San Francisco are mixed with news of a new subvariant called clade 1b, which is associated with higher mortality and is spreading in parts of Africa. The new variant recently recorded its first case in Europe. There are no known cases of the new variant in the United States.

“Currently, cases of MPOX in San Francisco are very low. The seven-day average for MPOX cases is currently zero,” the health department said in a statement. “SFDPH strongly recommends and encourages the two-dose vaccination for all people living with HIV, anyone taking or able to take HIV PrEP, and all men, transgender, and nonbinary people who have sex with men, transgender, or nonbinary people.”

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Francisco, said in previous outbreaks, infection was mostly limited to men who had sex with men. He warned that the new subvariant could spread more easily to other populations.

Chin-Hong said that when the virus spread widely across the country in 2022, the mortality rate was less than one percent and most of those who died were severely immunocompromised.

This year, some MPOX outbreaks have been documented in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. However, the San Francisco Bay Area was largely spared. No significant increase in cases was recorded after San Francisco’s Pride celebrations, Chin-Hong said.

There were fewer than 2,000 cases of Mpox in the U.S. last year, compared to more than 30,000 in 2022. There have been about 700 cases of the disease nationwide so far. Chin-Hong said he has not treated a single Mpox case at his San Francisco hospital this year.

Chin-Hong attributed the decline in case numbers to several factors, including previous infection, which confers lifelong immunity to the disease, and greater public awareness of risk factors and vaccinations.

However, they said that of those eligible for vaccination, only about 25 percent had received both doses.

“My advice is to just stay alert and not panic,” Chin-Hong said. “You can’t get anything from Muni, and you can’t get anything from a doorknob.”