Mpox less likely to lead school closures, say US public health experts

Although the World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared mpox a global health emergency, mpox is highly unlikely to lead to school closures, according to physicians and public health experts in the US, local media reported.

Amid debates over whether the mpox outbreak could affect the education, health officials in the US federal government do not anticipate that mpox cases will lead to coronavirus-level school lockdowns.

“This is not like COVID, where there's nothing visible on somebody,” NBC quoted Christina Hutson, head of the poxvirus and rabies branch at the Atlanta-based US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as saying.

With mpox, “you actually can see the lesions on somebody. Unless you're directly touching them, you're not going to get infected,” she added.

While the mpox outbreak in Africa is worrisome, schools in the US will absolutely not shut down if mpox spreads in the country, said Carlos del Rio, a professor of medicine and expert in infectious disease at Emory University in Atlanta.

“The approach to this virus,” he said of mpox, “is very different.”

Michelle Taylor, director and health officer of the Shelby County Health Department in Memphis, Tennessee, said mpox is not airborne.

Taylor stressed that there is no evidence that the virus is mutating or spreading in a way that would prompt school closures.

“Based on the science, I just don't believe that's going to happen,” he added.​​​​​​​

On Friday, the WHO secretary general said that the new mpox virus can be halted and brought under control.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said more than 100,000 confirmed mpox cases have been reported to the WHO since the global outbreak began in 2022, noting an unprecedented increase in cases in Africa.​​​​​​​