AR-News: [US] Death Sought for Animals in Monkeypox Case

[Andrew Gach]

Moving to prevent monkeypox from reaching wild animals in the United States,
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended yesterday that
all 850 animals from a contaminated shipment of exotic pets from Africa in
April be destroyed, along with all prairie dogs that might have been exposed
to them.

The agency warned pet owners not to release any sick or potentially exposed
animals into the wild.

Other mammals in homes or pet shops that might have been exposed should be
killed or should be quarantined for six weeks and watched for symptoms -
fever or cough, cloudy or crusty eyes, swollen lymph nodes or rash, the
agency said. Bodies should be burned, not buried or thrown out, and the
premises disinfected, it added.

An outbreak of monkeypox tentatively traced to a Gambian giant pouched rat
in the shipment has caused 81 confirmed or suspected cases in humans, mostly
in the Midwest. Its spread seems to have stopped, and no cases of
human-to-human transmission were found. But the disease spreads easily to
rodents.

A spokesman for the agency acknowledged that the authorities did not know
the whereabouts of many of the estimated 850 animals in an April 9 shipment
from Ghana to Texas, nor do they know if any were released.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/science/03POX.html?pagewanted=print&positi
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