The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a possible monkeypox case with Parkland Hospital and the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department (DCHHS).
According to the sheriff’s office, an inmate at the Dallas County Jail is undergoing a monkeypox test after exhibiting symptoms of the disease.
The jail will operate as normal, and individuals are still allowed to visit inmates, according to spokeswoman Jasmyn Carter.
“We have had a lot of active experience in those protocols keeping people safe over the last two-and-a-half years with COVID,” stated Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown.
The Dallas County Health and Human Services Department recorded 14 cases of monkeypox as of July 12, with at least one local exposure incident.
The Dallas Express reported, “The threat of monkeypox to the general Dallas County population remains low,” according to a press release. “Monkeypox is rare and does not spread easily between people without close, personal, skin–to–skin contact.”
Although the virus is not believed to be highly contagious, respiratory droplets from coughing and sneezing can spread it. Still, the transmission usually requires a significant time spent in close proximity to an infected person.
Texas presently has the seventh-highest number of confirmed monkeypox cases in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with 43 cases as of Thursday out of 1,470 total cases stretched across the country.
There have been confirmed cases in Dallas, Tarrant, and Denton Counties.
There is a limited supply of the monkeypox vaccination, according to DCHHS. The vaccine can only be given to people who have had skin-to-skin contact with a confirmed monkeypox case, according to DCHHS.
Individuals infected with monkeypox may initially display symptoms including body aches, fever, and enlarged lymph nodes before eventually developing skin lesions after a non-contagious incubation period of one to two weeks.