According to a press release issued on May 5 by Howard Brown Health, a nonprofit LGBTQ health care and social services provider based in Chicago, the agency detected seven new confirmed cases of mpox in the Chicago area from April 17 to May 5, with some results from conducted tests still pending. The case rate was the highest in the metropolitan area since November 2022 and was the highest weekly reported case rate in any area in the United States in 2023.
In a report focused on the rise in cases from NBC News, Rosamund Lewis, MD, the technical lead for mpox at the World Health Organization, noted that “diagnosed cases have been ‘increasing slightly’ in eight countries in the past 3 weeks, including France and several countries in east Asia.”