Questions are swirling after a woman became sick after coming in contact with an overturned truck of macaque monkeys on their way to a Florida lab.
Pennsylvania resident Michelle Fallon was driving directly behind a truck carrying 100 cynomolgus macaque monkeys last week when the vehicle was hit by a dump truck, throwing the pricey primate crates all over the highway, according to Pennsylvania State Police. Three macaques escaped, but all have since been captured and euthanized. The 97 remaining monkeys, which arrived in the United States from Mauritius, have been accounted for and transported to their destination.
Fallon said she got out of her car and helped the driver put the animals in their cages. She initially thought the animals were cats but quickly realized her mistake when she put her hand on the cage and a monkey hissed at her.
Fallon posted on Facebook that after coming in contact with one of the macaques, she got sick with a nasty cough and pink eye so severe she had to go to the emergency room at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville.
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Infectious disease doctors gave her the first of four rabies shots and antiviral drugs. Fallon posted she was monitoring for symptoms of rabies and monkey herpesvirus B but said her “symptoms are covid symptoms. Like seriously. A day from hell!”
Fallon said after she came in contact with the monkeys, she went home and straight to bed. She said a local news crew dispatched to the scene told her aunt that authorities warned no one should get too close to the monkeys. PETA and state and local authorities warned residents not to come in contact with the escaped animals.
“Anyone who sees or locates the monkey is asked not to approach, attempt to catch, or come in contact with the monkey,” state police tweeted following Friday’s crash in Montour County.
Trooper Lauren Lesher said the directive to stay away was “due to it not being a domesticated animal and them being in an unknown territory,” adding, “it is hard to say how they would react to a human approaching them.”
“Well, I tried to pet one,” Fallon said. “I touched the crates and walked in poop.”
Fallon said she spoke to someone from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was told she’d be getting a letter and that she’s at a “very low risk for I don’t know what yet.”
The search for the missing monkeys took on an urgency not regularly seen with other animals. Local authorities were aided by the Liberty Valley Fire Department, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the CDC, and the Pennsylvania Health Department, among others. Troopers searched for the monkeys with rifles in their hands and had a helicopter on standby to track them down. Firefighters even used thermal imaging technology to locate the animals.
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It’s not clear where the monkeys were going or what they’d be used for, but cynomolgus monkeys are often used in medical studies.
One monkey can be sold for as much as $10,000 to a lab, and some scientists have even called for an emergency reserve of the animals, similar to strategic stockpiles of grain, oil, and pharmaceuticals.
