Mayo Clinic Laboratories will begin testing for monkeypox using the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) orthopoxvirus test, which detects most non-smallpox related orthopoxviruses, including monkeypox.
Mayo Clinic Laboratories will offer this testing at its Mayo Clinic’s Division of Clinical Microbiology laboratories in Rochester, Minn., and can accept specimens from anywhere in the country. Mayo Clinic Laboratories expects to be able to perform up to 10,000 tests per week, which will continue to increase the current capacity provided through CDC’s Laboratory Response Network (LRN) and Labcorp, which began testing last week.
On June 22, HHS announced that five commercial laboratory companies would soon begin offering monkeypox testing. Since then, CDC has shipped the tests to the laboratories and their employees have been trained on their administration, among other steps.
Anyone with a rash that looks like monkeypox should talk to their healthcare provider about whether they need to get tested, even if they don’t think they had contact with someone who has monkeypox. Healthcare providers, nationwide, can order the orthopoxvirus test from Mayo Clinic Laboratories just as they normally would order other tests. The public will not be able to go to a Mayo Clinic laboratory and submit a specimen. Mayo Clinic Laboratories will use electronic laboratory reporting to report results to jurisdictions as outlined in the CDC reporting guidance.
