Environmental Testing of Surfaces in the Room of a Patient With Mpox
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To the Editor—Data from the current global outbreak of mpox virus (MPXV) suggest that person-to-person transmission is occurring via prolonged skin-to-skin exposure [1]. However, evidence from MPXV and other poxviruses has raised concerns about the potential for both aerosol transmission and contact transmission via contaminated fomites, particularly bed linens [2, 3]. Our hospital provided care for a patient with mpox. This patient developed >25–99 lesions, beginning in the genital and perioral area, with fever and malaise occurring 2 days after the onset of the first lesions. He was admitted to an airborne isolation room 7 days after the initial lesions and 1 day after the disseminated lesions developed. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing of the lesions were MPXV-positive on days 1, 2, 3, and 7. To assess the potential for aerosol and fomite transmission, environmental testing was conducted. High- and low-touch surfaces in the patient’s room were swabbed with flocked swabs dipped in McMaster molecular media (a guanidine isothiocyanate–based transport media that inactivates virus but preserves viral nucleic acid [4]). A 10 cm × 10 cm template was used with the entire 100 cm2 area swabbed. For complex surfaces (eg, doorknob), the entire surface was swabbed. Swabs were sent to the Public Health Ontario Laboratory for testing. A specimen was considered positive if Orthopoxvirus DNA was detected, as well as at least 1 mpox-specific target (pan-mpox or West African [WA] clade mpox, with at least 1 target cycle threshold [Ct] value <38). Ct values between 38 and 39.9 were considered indeterminate. To rule out the possibility of laboratory contamination, testing was repeated from 6 of 9 specimens, including reextraction of nucleic acid. Three specimens could not be retested due to insufficient quantity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".