A man in California says he is simultaneously infected with COVID and monkey pox in the first known case in America.
Mitcho Thompson, a cannabis seller in Sebastopol, tested positive for the pandemic virus in late June after feeling “wiped out”. Days later, red lesions erupted across his back, legs, arms and neck, which he said doctors diagnosed monkeypox with.
Thompson was bedridden for weeks as difficulty breathing and chills left him barely able to stand for water.
dr. Dean Winslow, an infectious disease expert at Stanford University, said it was possible for someone to be infected by both viruses at the same time. He said Thompson had been “unbelievably unlucky.”
It comes as the monkey pox count in America rises to 2,593 cases — the second-highest number in the world, right behind Spain, which has 3,125 cases.
Mitcho Thompson, a cannabis seller in Sebastopol, says he is infected with COVID and monkey pox at the same time. He is pictured at home above
He tested positive for COVID in late June after feeling bad. But a few days later, lesions erupted across his back, legs, arms and neck, which doctors diagnosed as monkey pox.
Thompson – who also has a cat – revealed his diagnosis with both diseases during an interview with NBC Bay Area.
He told the broadcaster: ‘The COVID was the first, and that made it really weird because I didn’t realize I had monkey pox until I started to break out [in lesions].
“The doctor was very sure that I have monkey pox and that I have both.
“That was the question, can I get them both at the same time, and he said ‘yes, yes, yes’.” ‘
Thompson said both viruses made him feel “very sick.”
“And the worst, honestly, was when I could barely get out of bed, and you could barely drink a drink of water.”
A COVID infection causes flu-like symptoms, including fever, cough, shortness of breath and muscle aches.
A monkeypox infection also causes these warning signs in the early stages, which then develop into a rash that spreads throughout the body.
Thompson said he tested positive for COVID, but ruled out the possibility that his flu symptoms were just the result of monkey pox.
It was not clear how Thompson got monkey pox or COVID, or what treatments he had received.
Health authorities are offering antivirals such as Paxlovid to COVID patients to help fight their infection, and vaccines to those who test positive for monkeypox, which they say can reduce symptoms.
When asked if it was possible to get COVID and monkey pox at the same time, Winslow said: “It’s certainly not impossible for that to happen, it’s just unbelievably unlucky.
‘But they are very different viruses.
Monkeypox is in the same family of viruses as smallpox.
“One of the little good things about monkeypox is that it is transmitted almost exclusively through very close contact and not necessarily sexual contact, but certainly very close contact.”
Monkeypox belongs to the orthopox family of viruses, which tend to cause rashes in those they infect.
On the other hand, COVID is part of the family of Coronaviruses – which get their name from the spike proteins that surround them ‘like a crown’.
Another key difference is that COVID is mainly transmitted through droplets emitted into the air, while monkeypox does this only in very rare cases, when there is ‘sustained’ face-to-face contact.
It came when the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) insisted that America still had the “possibility” to contain monkeypox.
dr. Rochelle Walensky claimed in an interview Friday that the government’s response is getting stronger every day.
“I think we still have a chance to contain this,” she said.
But her comments came as the number of cases in the US rose to the second highest worldwide, and after other experts warned that the disease is now likely to spiral out of control.
America’s response to the outbreak has been slow from the start, with the CDC taking weeks to get the tests underway.
In the early days of the outbreak, it was running less than 100 a day.
The federal government has also been criticized for failing to roll out vaccines quickly, which public health experts say would have helped slow the spread of the virus.