Baby Diagnosed With Monkeypox After Mysterious Rash Stumped Florida Doctors for Days

monkeypox Pediatric infections Pediatric monkeypox infections monkeypox outbreak Centers for Disease Control and Prevention molluscum contagiosum

By Joel Brussels , Parent Herald Sep 21, 06:56 pm

Photo: (Photo : PASCAL GUYOT/AFP via Getty Images))

A two-month-old baby showed up at an emergency room in Florida in August with a raised, red rash on its legs, arms, and trunk. Doctors were not sure what was going on with the infant. Their routine tests for viruses, including chickenpox, HIV, and herpes, as well as bacterial causes of the rash, all came back negative.

When the baby returned two days later to the ER, that week-old rash had already developed into pox-like lesions all over the infant's body. Many of the bumps had a distinctive dot in the center, leading providers to think this must be molluscum contagiosum.

It is a relatively common childhood infection transmitted via skin-to-skin contact, which does not typically require much treatment. However, the baby's bumps started to fill with pus over the next few days.

Providers took ten days before arriving at monkeypox diagnosis

The pox spread over the baby's back, face, eyelids, and the soles of their feet. The providers then decided to perform a different test, this time for monkeypox. Ten days after the rash initially surfaced, they confirmed that the baby had monkeypox.

The case study was published in a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday, September 19. It provided vivid new details about how monkeypox can develop and present on the body of a newborn baby. CDC officials explained how the newborn contracted monkeypox, emphasizing that this is a rare event in the current outbreak.

The infant, whose gender and name were not published to protect the kid's identity, received both an IV drip of disease-fighting antibodies (called immune globulin, or IVIG) and the antiviral drug tecovirimat (TPOXX).

CDC disease investigators said in their new report on Monday that the child did not develop a fever. The baby managed to tolerate the treatments well and fully recovered.

Pediatric infections like this have been exceedingly rare in the current monkeypox outbreak. Only 27 monkeypox infections have been diagnosed in children under 16 years old in the United States since the nationwide monkeypox outbreak began in the spring.

Baby got monkeypox from caregiver

That is a tiny fraction of the nearly 23,500 monkeypox cases that have been officially documented thus far. The baby, in this case, likely got monkeypox from very close, sustained, and daily contact with one of its four main caregivers.

The man, identified only as "Caregiver B" in the new CDC report, had blood in his urine, developed a fever, and a rash visible on his body during the three weeks before the infant developed any symptoms, according to Insider.

The baby, during that time, shared bed linens with Caregiver B and slept alongside him. The child had sustained skin-to-skin contact from being held and cared for every day by the infected caregiver. Caregiver B tested positive for an orthopox virus, which is likely also monkeypox, a couple of days after the baby tested positive.