Wastewater being tested for monkeypox after Southern Decadence

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)— The City of New Orleans’ Health Department is analyzing wastewater samples to see if monkeypox is spreading in our area.

The health department also says its Health Hub in Armstrong Park, which gave out free monkeypox, vaccines was a big success.

Mark LeBeau and Matthew Rose visited New Orleans this past weekend and say they think the Louisiana Department of Health and City’s Health Department did a great job of making them feel safe from monkeypox.

“Just having the ability to go get shots if you needed them and having them conveniently placed around town was a really smart idea,” Matthew Rose said.

“There were a bunch of signs on the streets pointing people to monkeypox and covid vaccines. A smart plan, and good planning in advance,” Mark LeBeau said.

Dr. Jennifer Avegno, the Director of the New Orleans Health Department says their Health Hub at Armstrong Park which had 6,000 monkeypox vaccines to give out was a huge success. They administered around 800 shots.

“People came out and it was steady and we had a lot of folks from all over the place, and a lot of locals. We had a lot of people tell us they were incredibly grateful,” Dr. Avegno said.

Now looking forward, Dr. Avegno said they are closely monitoring the wastewater to see if there’s a bigger presence of monkeypox in our area.

“With monkeypox, we hope it is something we contain and it goes away. Wastewater can be a really useful tool for us to know if it’ll pick up again. Monkeypox like polio we do hope will go away,” Dr. Avegno said.

Dr. Avegno went on to say, “Monkeypox is new. It is not something that has ever been sampled in wastewater. We want to see if the sampling it will be useful.”

The results from the wastewater will take about a week for us to find out if there is more monkeypox in our wastewater.