CDC backtracks! Agency DROPS advice for travelers to wear face masks to protect themselves against monkeypox after less than 24 hours as it confirms 31 cases in US including seven in New York and six in California
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed advice to wear masks for travelers that it issued in an alert last week
- Edit was made less than 13 hours after the media began to report the advice
- CDC is yet to explain why it decided to make the edit to its travel alert
- Monkeypox is typically transmitted through physical contact with skin lesions
- But in some cases it could also be spread by breathing in infected droplets
The CDC has dropped its advice for travelers to wear face masks to protect themselves against monkeypox just 24 hours after it was reported by the media.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deleted this bullet point from there alert on the tropical disease before 3 a.m. on Tuesday, screen captures show.
A day before the page read: ‘Wear a mask. Wearing a mask can help protect you from many diseases, including monkeypox.’
It was quietly added to the section six days ago, after the threat level was raised to Level 2 which advises travelers to ‘practice enhanced precautions’.
DailyMail.com has contacted the CDC for an explanation on the decision to take down the guidance.
On Monday, Fox News reported the change on its website in an article published at 1:07 p.m EST. Later in the day, both DailyMail.com and CNBC also reported the guidance.
Monkeypox can only be spread by people showing symptoms of the virus, and typically transmits through physical contact with infectious skin lesions. But in some cases it can also be spread through breathing in droplets from infected people.
America has detected 31 cases across 12 states and Washington D.C. so far, with most having lesions opening in the genital area as their first symptom.
Screen grabs of their website taken at 3am on June 7 (labeled top right) show that the advice to wear a face mask has been removed
But in a grab from just the day before the advice to wear a face mask is still clearly visible on the website
Monkeypox has now been detected in 12 U.S. states and Washington D.C., official figures show
Screen captures from the WayBack Machine — the internet’s un-official archive — revealed the back pedal from the agency.
When the advice to wear a face mask was first added to the page on June 1, the CDC did not put out an alert or a press release.
It was picked up by media outlets — including DailyMail.com — on Monday afternoon which warned Americans to wear face masks.
But within 13 hours of this it had been removed from their website.
The CDC web page was down this morning, but when it came back online at around 9am it continued to show that the bullet point had been removed.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk