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As students return to Yale’s classrooms, University officials are preparing for the potential spread of monkeypox, which the White House declared a national public health emergency earlier this month. 

The University developed a multi-disciplinary working group that started meeting early in the summer to plan Yale’s response to monkeypox infections and develop prevention strategies, said Stephanie Spangler, vice provost for health affairs and academic integrity. The University has so far released guidance on testing, vaccination and prevention, and has isolation plans in place should students contract the virus.

“At this point, Yale has a lot of experience with managing students’ learning needs remotely,” Paul Genecin, Chief Executive Officer of Yale Health, wrote in an email to the News. “Hopefully, it won’t be necessary!” 

One day after the White House’s Aug. 4 declaration of a public health emergency, Spangler and Madeline Wilson, Chief Quality Officer at Yale Health, wrote to the community with information about the disease. In the email, they also emphasized the difference between COVID-19 and monkeypox, as monkeypox is not airborne and not a novel disease. 

Wilson and Spangler also wrote in their email that monkeypox primarily spreads through close skin-to-skin contact with the rash or lesions of an infected person or less commonly through objects used by an infected person. 

Genecin said that to date, monkeypox has disproportionately affected men who have sex with men, but anyone can get monkeypox if exposed through intimate or close contact. He added that exposure can occur from respiratory secretions, direct contact and contact with contaminated items such as clothing. 

There are a variety of ways for students to reduce their risk of contracting monkeypox, according to Chief of Student Health Christine Chen. Preventive measures include avoiding crowded gatherings and avoiding touching objects like bedding and clothing that have been in contact with an infected person. Sexually active students can lower their risk by temporarily reducing their number of sexual partners, knowing their partners and using condoms. 

Chen wrote in an email to undergraduates that monkeypox can spread among social and sexual networks, but it is “much less infectious” than an airborne virus like COVID-19 and is therefore “very unlikely to affect campus health to the degree that an airborne virus can.” 

Genecin said that Yale Health is “prepared for an outbreak,” but he added that “widespread infection of the sort we see with COVID is not at all likely” due to the lower transmissibility of monkeypox.

“There are no unique factors about Yale or other college campuses that make outbreaks more likely,” Genecin wrote to the News. “However, we have obviously people in our community who have risk factors.”

Chen said that an effective vaccine, JYNNEOS, should be administered within four days of exposure and can be administered at one of three local vaccine clinics. 

Yale Health will provide isolation instructions along with clinical support if a student tests positive. Yale Health’s website states that students living on campus may go home to isolate or a location will be provided on campus, and students living off campus will be provided with information on isolation practices. 

Those who contract monkeypox at Yale and opt to stay on campus will isolate in inpatient units in Yale Health, Genecin told the News. The isolation period for monkeypox is significantly longer than COVID-19; Chen wrote in her email that isolation lasts two to four weeks, until lesions are completely gone. 

Alexandra Savinkina GRD ’27, a public health graduate student who has been studying models of monkeypox at universities and Yale specifically, said that universal vaccination is not being considered currently. Melanie Chitwood, another graduate student in the School of Public Health who studies these models, said her research shows that other methods can be used besides vaccination to prevent large outbreaks.

“The only time where we see a sustained outbreak is when we do nothing, so it seems it might be possible to do enough good public health, that university students wouldn’t be considered high risk and we wouldn’t be recommending vaccines for them,” Chitwood told the News. 

Savinkina has studied monkeypox risk at college campuses in general, but said two risk factors set Yale apart from other campuses: the large student population and proximity to a large city. 

Savinkina added that through her modeling, she found that the most important factor in stopping monkeypox spread at universities is being able to diagnose cases quickly and isolate students who test positive. 

Eligibility information for monkeypox vaccinations can be found on the Connecticut Department of Public Health’s website. Information about monkeypox resources at Yale can be found on the Yale Health website.