Fact Checking the Arab Media

On June 21, the Arabic news website Jusur.com carried an article entitled, “Monkeypox in Lebanon…Medical preparedness to confront it, but did the infections increase?” In order to explore the issue, Jusur relied on only one primary source, Dr. Jacques Mokhbat, Clinical Professor at the Division of Infectious Diseases, Lebanese American University of Beirut. While addressing the spread of Mokeypox generally, Dr. Mokhbat asserted confidently that, “Although smallpox has disappeared from the face of the earth since the late seventies of the last century, after all of humanity was vaccinated, those who have previously taken the vaccine against it, specifically those over the age of fifty, are protected from the risk of catching the monkeypox virus.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Monkeypox is a viral zoonosis (a virus transmitted to humans from animals) with symptoms similar to those seen in the past in smallpox patients, although it is clinically less severe. “With the eradication of smallpox in 1980 and subsequent cessation of smallpox vaccination, monkeypox has emerged as the most important orthopoxvirus for public health,” the agency notes in its public health advisory on the subject. Monkeypox primarily occurs in central and west Africa, often in proximity to tropical rainforests, and has been increasingly appearing in urban areas. Animal hosts include a range of rodents and non-human primates.

In 2003, however, the first monkeypox outbreak outside of Africa was in the United States of America and was linked to contact with infected pet prairie dogs. In May 2022, according to both the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the WHO, multiple cases of monkeypox were identified in several non-endemic countries. As of this month, June 2022, a total of 528 cases have been confirmed across five continents, 16 countries, and 43 clinical sites.

Fact Check Assessment: Partially True

According to the WHO, there is indeed a strong correlation between protection against monkeypox, the smallpox vaccine and age. As their public health notice last month explained further, “Although vaccination against smallpox was protective in the past, today persons younger than 40 to 50 years of age (depending on the country) may be more susceptible to monkeypox due to cessation of smallpox vaccination campaigns globally after eradication of the disease [emphasis added].” Here we can see that the crucial advice about protection against monkeypox isn’t rooted in age per se but rather whether someone has gotten the smallpox vaccine in the first place - something much more likely with older adults because they grew up during the period of a concerted, and successful, global vaccination program targeting smallpox. As one major medical study on the subject published in 2010 discovered, the central problem during monkeypox outbreaks has been that smallpox vaccination programs were largely scaled back across the world over the previous decades. For example, after smallpox vaccination campaigns ceased in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the 1980s, “the people of central Africa who are in frequent contact with monkeypox-infected animals are no longer protected against infection.” Also important: As the CDC recently clarified, even if someone received the smallpox vaccine, whether they are age 50 or below, “Booster doses are recommended every 2 or 10 years if a person remains at continued risk for exposure to smallpox, monkeypox, or other orthopoxviruses.”

As such, Dr. Mokhbat is only partially correct when he asserts that “those over the age of fifty are protected from the risk of catching the monkeypox virus,” since an older adult may be vulnerable - perhaps even as much as someone who never received the vaccine - if that person had the smallpox vaccine outside of the recommended booster range of ten years.