Monkeypox Heavily Impacts Black and Latino Gay Men

istock (Model(s) used for illustrative purposes only) More than half of people with monkeypox in the United States are now Black and Latino men who have sex with men, according to the latest demographic data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The shift toward gay and bisexual men of color increasingly mirrors long-standing disparities in the U.S. HIV epidemic.

“We’re creating a caste system of who is going to get access to what is needed for monkeypox,” long-time AIDS activist Gregg Gonsalves, PhD, now at the Yale School of Public Health, told PBS . “What we’re seeing is that the health disparities we’ve seen in COVID, we’ve seen in HIV, are recapitulating themselves with this new virus.”

As of August 16, the CDC has identified 12,689 monkeypox cases in the United States. Worldwide, there are now more than 38,000 cases , most of them in countries where monkeypox had not been reported prior to this outbreak.

While anyone can get monkeypox through close physical contact, cases remain overwhelmingly concentrated among gay, bisexual, transgender and other men who have sex with men. A new report from the CDC shows that 99% of cases with available data were among men, and […]

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