Colorado officials identify the first presumptive case in the state, awaiting confirmation.

Colorado officials have identified a first presumptive case of monkeypox in the state and are awaiting confirmation from federal authorities, the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment said Thursday afternoon.

The patient, a young adult male who sought treatment in Denver, had recently traveled to Canada, where a monkeypox outbreak has been identified, the agency said.

The state is awaiting confirmation of the case from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No other presumptive cases have been identified, and the person is working with health officials. He is recovering and isolating at home, the agency said.

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“We want to reassure Coloradans that the risk to the public is low, but we also want them to know of the symptoms so that we can catch other cases as soon as possible,” Rachel Herlihy, the state’s epidemiologist, said in a statement.

Monkeypox is within the same family of viruses as smallpox and is spread through skin-to-skin contact and infectious bodily fluids. Vaccines and treatments exist for the disease, which can cause fever, fatigue, headache, swollen lymph nodes and a distinct rash typically concentrated in the face or groin area. Cases often resolve on their own over several days or weeks.

Two vaccines are available to prevent the disease, and Colorado has requested doses from the federal government, the health department said.

Nationally, only nine other cases have been identified in seven states. But some of those cases are linked to community spread, meaning local transmission as opposed to that related to travel.

Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC’s Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, said “it’s a little too early to tell” whether the virus has the potential to become endemic in the United States.

“I think we’re in the very early days of our investigations,” said McQuiston. “We don’t yet know how many (cases) there might be.”

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“We’re working hard to contain the cases that are happening so they don’t spread onward. So I think it’s a little too early to tell,” she said.

But an outbreak of the virus in 2003 that resulted in the infection of hundreds of animals and several people was successfully contained, McQuiston noted, giving the agency hope that the current outbreak can be managed as well.

Though anyone is susceptible to infection to monkeypox, the current outbreak appears to be concentrated among gay and bisexual men. Past monkeypox outbreaks have circulated primarily within other communities, officials said, noting that anyone is susceptible to infection.

Colorado’s first presumptive case of the disease is a man who has sex with men, according to the state health department.