A former US Food and Drug Administration official announced that the United States had failed to contain the outbreak monkeypox disease It is “on the cusp” of seeing the virus endemic.
As Scott Gottlieb told CBS on Sunday, “I think the window to control and contain the virus may have closed, and if it didn’t close, it certainly started to close.”
He continued: “It’s possible that we are only discovering a small fraction of the actual cases, because for a very long time we have had a very narrow definition of cases and it is centered around who is tested.”
Monkeypox – Emoji from iStock
“Generally, we look in the LGBT community and STD clinics and find cases. But there are cases outside this community at the moment and we don’t monitor them because we don’t look for them.”
He also spoke of the number of cases in the United States, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are thousands of cases right now.”
The same mistakes are repeated
He explained, “We made many of the same mistakes we made with Covid 19, which is having a narrow definition of the case, not doing enough testing early enough, and not providing a vaccine in an effective way,” noting that the virus will not explode because it is difficult for it to spread, but it will be continuous.
Last month, New York City and Washington, D.C. began offering limited monkeypox vaccines and quickly hit the deadlines.
New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said the city is “fighting two epidemics simultaneously,” NBC 4 reported.
Monkey pox – expression
Will he declare an emergency?
On Friday, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced that it had ordered an additional 2.5 million doses of monkeypox vaccines to respond to the outbreak.
In addition, the World Health Organization is expected to meet this week to determine whether monkeypox should be declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), its highest alert.
What is monkeypox?
Monkeypox is a rare disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, fatigue, and a chicken pox-like rash on the hands and face.
The disease is generally endemic in West and Central Africa, and infections have been recorded in Europe since May, and the number of countries that monitored it on their soil has increased since then.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are currently more than 1,800 cases of monkeypox in the United States and more than 12,500 cases worldwide.
