First US death due to Monkeypox

22,000 patients identified in the United States, and now officially one death. A Los Angeles County resident has died of Monkeypox, the public health department announced Monday. This is the first death officially due to the Monkeypox virus across the Atlantic.

The patient, severely immunocompromised, had been hospitalized. Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in the department of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told CNN that “the patient’s weakened immune system could not control the virus once it entered their body.” The virus “has likely spread to multiple organ systems, causing them to malfunction,” he said. The authorities did not provide further details on the profile of the deceased.

Three deaths in Europe

Another patient, also severely immunocompromised, lost his life at the end of August in Texas after catching Monkeypox. Some American media write that the death recorded in Los Angeles is the second in the United States, but the link between infection and death has not been confirmed in Texas.

In Europe, three deaths of Monkeypox patients have been recorded to date: two in Spain and one in Belgium. The two patients in Spain apparently lost their lives due to encephalitis following the infection, while the one who died in Belgium had other health problems.

The case fatality rate of Monkeypox remains very low, and patients mostly recover well from the disease. But “the number of serious cases could increase if the virus were to circulate in the general population (the people considered to be most at risk being young children, immunocompromised people and pregnant women)”.