get the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine. To date, it’s the only vaccine authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to combat the disease.
The vaccine — which remains in short supply — has been shown to reduce the risk for disease even after exposure, as long as it is administered within the following four days.
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Frightening symptoms
“Unfortunately, the next day I started showing symptoms,” Watson recalls.
Meanwhile, in Sao Paolo, within just 48 hours of the date where he believes he was exposed, Araujo started to notice some pustules forming on his hands.
“By Monday morning, it was too painful for me to go to work,” he shares. “So, I called my boss, and told him that I thought I had been bitten by a spider or a little bug.”
Araujo then made his way to the Emilio Ribas Institute of Infectious Diseases, one of the top infectious disease institutions in Brazil. Two days after testing, he got his results: positive.
In London, a few days before he was to fly to Greece, David thought he’d come down with a sexually transmitted disease (STD).
“I got a kind of burning sensation when I peed,” he says. “Just a little bit. Then, that got a little bit worse.” He then noticed “tiny little white blisters” on his penis.
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After the burning sensation turned to pain and blood in his urine, David got scared.
“I went in and was swabbed for everything, including monkeypox,” he recalls. “I still thought I had a standard STD. But that night, I got a pustule on my right temple. Then I started to freak out. I realized that this is monkeypox.”
On Monday, another pustule appeared on the sole of one foot, shortly followed by more. And on Tuesday the call from the lab came in: positive for monkeypox.
Following his diagnosis, Araujo’s mildly painful hand pustules took about a week to