WSB-TV is getting real about monkeypox and its impact on minorities.
The disease is badly affecting the black community, but the good news is that now anyone can get tested for the virus without leaving your car.
Channel 2’s Audrey Washington Was on a new drive through open Monkeypox testing site on North Druid Hills Road in DeKalb, where it was busy Friday afternoon.
The site tests for both COVID-19 and monkeypox virus.
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But activists told Washington that about 25% of those who arrived on Friday came for monkeypox testing.
One by one, they drove and tested the car. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are more than 16,000 confirmed monkeypox cases nationwide and Georgia has about 1,300 cases.
Executive Director of the COVID-19 Task Force at Piedmont Heathcare, Dr. Jane Morgan said she expects cases to continue to rise.
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“What’s happening is exactly what we should have expected, because we’ve seen it happen in COVID, and we’ve certainly seen it happen in HIV,” Morgan said.
Morgan said infectious agents usually take hold in populations that have the fewest resources and those most disadvantaged. She said that factor explains why research now finds increasing racial disparity related to new monkey cases.
“Here in Georgia we see that about 82% of monkeypox cases have been in black men,” Morgan said. “It really depends on whether you have health access and what your resources are.”
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Camille Seaton is the first woman in Georgia to be diagnosed with monkeypox. She said it took about three and a half weeks to recover.
“It’s still all over my body, but stuff and everything is getting worse,” Seaton said.
She said it’s important to remember that despite the rise of the virus in the Black community, monkeypox does not discriminate.
“Monkeypox waits for no one,” Seaton said. “It doesn’t care who it attacks.”
People at risk of the virus are urged to get vaccinated.
(This story has not been edited by seemayo staff and is published from a rss feed)