Monkeypox: Colleges Focus on Educating Students About Its Transmission
(CNN) — With nearly 9,000 confirmed monkeypox cases nationwide, there is growing concern that US college and university campuses could become monkeypox "hotspots" this fall.Educators are working to reduce the public health risk while some students worry about how their campus experiences might be affected by the virus -- a virus that the nation is still trying to control and that was recently declared a national public health emergency."As we head into the fall, I'm concerned about outbreaks on college campuses as they are often a place where individuals engage in higher risk sexual activity and are in close contact with many different people," Dr.
Rachel Cox, an assistant professor in the School of Nursing at the Mass General Health Institute of Health Professionals, said in an email to CNN. "We need to make sure we're prepared to allocate resources like tests, vaccines, and antivirals to places that may become hotspots."Sydney Greenstein, an 18-year-old incoming freshman at New York University, said that while he's excited to begin his college experience, he has concerns about his risk of exposure in New York City, which has one of the highest numbers of monkeypox cases in the country.
There are 1,937 confirmed or probable cases in New York City, according to the NYC Department of Health."It's definitely put a consideration into school and what my plans are and how I'm going to, you know, be social and interact with people and go out," Greenstein said.Greenstein will be moving from Maryland to New York at the end of this month to start school and said he has not heard much from NYU about its monkeypox response plans.
