California mpox cases raise concerns. But health officials say the risk
remains low
[October 17, 2025]
By MIKE STOBBE
NEW YORK (AP) — Two Californians diagnosed with mpox may be the first
U.S. cases resulting from the local spread of a different version of the
virus, health officials said.
The Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services this week
confirmed the first case through testing at a state lab. Los Angeles
County health officials on Thursday reported a second, similar case.
The risk to the public is low, officials say.
These are not the U.S. first cases of what is known as clade I mpox. But
all six previous cases were among international travelers who were
believed to have been infected abroad.
Both infected people in California were hospitalized, and they are now
recovering at home. Officials declined to give other details. But “at
this point in our investigations, we have not identified any association
between the two cases,” Long Beach health department acting public
affairs officer Jennifer Ann Gonzalez said.
Long Beach is located in Los Angeles County but has its own city health
department. Investigators there say they have not found a close contact
who traveled abroad, nor have they confirmed additional cases. A few of
the person's close contacts have been given a vaccine, said Nora Balanji,
the Long Beach department’s communicable disease coordinator.
“We don’t have any proof that there has been ongoing community
transmission,” she said. "It’s something we’re looking into. That’s
something we’re concerned about."
Mpox — also known as monkeypox — is a rare disease caused by infection
with a virus that is in the same family as the one that causes smallpox.
It is endemic in parts of Africa.
Milder symptoms can include fever, chills and body aches. In more
serious cases, people can develop lesions on the face, hands, chest and
genitals.
One version of the virus — called clade II — was the source of an
international health crisis in 2022, when infections escalated in dozens
of countries, mostly among men who have sex with men. At one point, the
U.S. was averaging close to 500 cases per day.
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Vials of the Jynneos vaccine for monkeypox are taken from a cooler
at a vaccinations site, Aug. 29, 2022, in the Brooklyn borough of
New York. (AP Photo/Jeenah Moon, File)
 The infections were rarely fatal,
but many people suffered painful skin lesions for weeks. Those
outbreaks waned later that year, thanks in part to the Jynneos
vaccine made by Bavarian Nordic.
The other version — known as clade I — likewise can spread through
sex, but also through other forms of contact. In Africa it has
infected a broader range of people, including children.
A newer form of the clade I virus has been widely transmitted in
eastern and central Africa. The World Health Organization declared
the situation a public health emergency, but last month it said the
problem had waned enough that it was no longer an international
emergency.
Still, “it’s concerning if this virus has come here and now is
starting to be transmitted from person to person,” said Dr. William
Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University.
The case report comes amid a federal government shutdown and the
layoffs of hundreds of employees at the Atlanta-based Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention — the agency that usually would be
involved in responding.
Balanji said a few CDC experts have been available to talk to her
department about the situation. But Schaffner noted that “the longer
the shutdown, the more impaired public health responses are to any
outbreaks.”
A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson referred
questions to local health officials.
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