Solano health officials won't identify city where monkeypox case treated
County health experts are also declining to provide demographic information about monkeypox patients locally; some experts say that decision does more harm than good.
(Photo courtesy Centers for Disease Control, Graphic by Solano NewsNet)
The Solano County Public Health Office is declining to identify the city where the first confirmed case of monkeypox was treated, even as it urges the public to remain vigilant about the virus.
Earlier this week, health officials with the county confirmed the first known case of monkeypox in the region and stated two other cases are suspected to be associated with the disease.
After Solano NewsNet’s story was published on Tuesday, readers began writing in with questions as to why the public health office didn’t disclose the location of the first confirmed case. In response to those questions, a spokesperson for the county said they were unable to provide that information, citing a need to preserve the privacy of community members.
The response stands in contrast to how public health officials handled the outbreak of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 two years ago. In February 2020, the Centers for Disease Control reported the first known case of COVID-19 in the United States was traced to a patient who was treated at NorthBay Healthcare’s Vaca Valley Hospital in Vacaville, then later transferred to the U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
On Wednesday, we asked the Solano County Public Health Office if it would be willing to identify the location of the hospital where the first case of monkeypox was treated, noting that this information was provided during the early stages of the domestic COVID-19 outbreak. A spokesperson responded that the office “has no further comment about the individual cases.”
“We will continue to monitor the situation and communicate any updates through our social media channels and the Solano Public Information Network (SPIN),” the spokesperson said. (Sometimes, the irony writes itself.)
The spokesperson also said it would decline to disclose any information about demographics related to the local cases of monkeypox. Health experts and research shows that one social group at a higher risk of contracting the virus is men who have sex with other men (MSM).
But public health officials have been reluctant to disclose that reality in their messaging over the virus, out of an apparent concern that it could stigmatize MSM the way the AIDS virus did in the 1980s. Instead, public health warnings have largely centered around the message that “anyone” can get the virus. Health experts say that messaging is technically true, but it is also misleading, given the data on who has actually contracted monkeypox over the last several months.
Public response to the outbreak, though, has shown that local health officials know MSM are more likely to become infected than anyone else. Different versions of a vaccine developed to combat the virus have been available to the public for several weeks, and officials in San Francisco and Sacramento chose to distribute the vaccine at public events held at LGBTQ resource centers. At most of those outreach events, the majority of participants who waited in line to receive the vaccine were men, according to video footage published on local news websites.
But public messaging about the monkeypox virus remains inconsistent with how health officials are combatting it. In its press release on Tuesday, the Solano County Public Health Office didn’t mention that MSM were more likely to get the virus; instead, it appeared to largely franchise health advice from the Centers for Disease Control, which has also largely failed to point out which social group was more at risk for contracting it.
That messaging has been replicated throughout the country, including in New York City, where a debate has raged for weeks over whether the city’s response to a localized outbreak there has been met with consistent and practical advice on prevention.
“We’re not telling people what they have to do to be safe,” Dr. Don Weiss, an official with the New York Department of Health’s Bureau of Communicable Disease, said in a New York Times interview. Another expert, Dr. Dustin Duncan, said it was important to “name the risk factors and behaviors, and give people options” for protecting themselves.
Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer with the Atlantic, charged public health messaging with not being consistent with research and data on whom was likely to be infected with monkeypox.
“Despite this barrage of data, an American following the public-health messaging on monkeypox might come away with the idea that all populations are similarly at risk of contracting the disease,” Demsas wrote, noting that the messaging seems to suggest that “anyone can get monkeypox.”
“The most-important time to be pointing out disparities is when the relevant population is both unaware of them and can take personal action to prevent harm,” Demsas said.
That should also include identifying where monkeypox is confirmed, health experts say, but as of Thursday morning, the Solano County Public Health Office has declined to do so.
In an attempt to further nail down where monkeypox was identified, Solano NewsNet reached out to the three health brands that operate hospitals locally: Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and NorthBay Healthcare. No one from Kaiser Permanente or Sutter Health returned our questions. A spokesperson for NorthBay Healthcare referred us to the county’s public health office.
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