This story was originally published at Capital B Atlanta. Public health, explained: Sign up to receive Healthbeat’s free Atlanta newsletter here.
Ever since the 2022 global outbreak of mpox, the number of cases has died down in the United States, but Fulton County officials warn that mpox hasn’t fully left Atlanta.
At a Fulton County Board of Health meeting last week, the county’s director of epidemiology, Sasha Smith, stated that mpox is one of the diseases that her team is keeping a close eye on as a number of cases sporadically fluctuated in Fulton County from July 2024 to June 2025.
“We’re still conducting surveillance, but there were 48 cases reported, and we did see a peak during October and March,” said Smith at the meeting. “It’s still circulating in the community. I think that’s the important part.”
Mpox is a disease caused by a virus that is in the same family as the virus that causes smallpox. Its main symptom is a rash that can occur on the hands, feet, chest, face, mouth, or genitals, and it can be accompanied by other symptoms like fever, chills, and swollen lymph nodes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At the time of the 2022 outbreak, there were 818 cases reported in the county. After the vaccine became available to at-risk populations in the late summer of 2022, the number of cases drastically dropped to 31, but picked back up in 2024 to 48, according to Smith.
One of the ways the disease can be contracted is from prolonged human-to-human contact, such as kissing, cuddling, or touching parts of the body with mpox sores.
During the outbreak, the LGBTQ community was a population particularly vulnerable to contracting the disease, and gay and bisexual men of color were especially at risk as they were disproportionately represented in the number of cases, according to the CDC. While Black people accounted for 12% of the U.S. population, they accounted for 33% of mpox cases at the time, according to a report by KFF.
In Georgia, that disparity held true, as Black, gay men were disproportionately impacted by mpox in 2022. Black men made up more than 80% of the mpox cases, whereas about 30% of Georgia’s population was Black in 2022.
Of the 48 cases reported in Fulton County from July 2024 to June 2025, 96% of the cases were male, according to Smith.
“Women also contract the infection, but disproportionately, it’s always been gay, bisexual men,” said Smith in an interview with Capital B Atlanta.
She said that while the county is not anticipating a major outbreak of mpox cases, she stressed that at-risk residents should get vaccinated if they haven’t already.
Justin Smith, the director of the Campaign to End AIDS at the Positive Impact Health Center in Atlanta, said the communities that have been most impacted by mpox are Black, gay men living with HIV and specifically those who are experiencing homelessness.
“The most vulnerable people had the worst outcomes, which in some ways you would sort of understand and sense that folks that have weaker immune systems and have less access to resources that would help keep them healthy — namely having a home — would have the worst outcomes,” said Justin Smith in an interview with Capital B News Atlanta.
According to the CDC, people with HIV are overrepresented in mpox cases in the United States and are at increased risk of severe mpox and death if they contract the disease. In Georgia, of the cases reported in 2022, 60% of mpox cases were contracted in people that were HIV-positive.
As HIV researchers and advocates have warned that looming budget cuts to HIV surveillance will negatively impact the state’s ability to tackle the HIV epidemic, Justin Smith said he’s worried that these cuts could also affect the state’s ability to effectively respond to mpox cases.
“To me, the danger that we face as we continue to reduce the amount of resources that flow into our public health system, we will have a system that is less well-equipped to be able to respond to health threats in the future,” he said.
Alyssa Johnson is Capital B Atlanta’s enterprise reporter.
