Comment on this story
comment
The Biden administration plans to declare the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency as soon as Thursday in an effort to raise awareness and unlock additional flexibility and funding to fight the spread of the virus.
The statement would come from Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who is expected to discuss the plan at an afternoon briefing, said two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. The health secretary is planning a second declaration that would allow federal officials to expedite medical countermeasures, such as potential treatments and vaccines, without going through full federal reviews. This would also allow greater flexibility in how the current vaccine supply is administered, officials said.
The administration’s announcement follows similar decisions by health officials in New York, California and Illinois and by global health leaders. The World Health Organization on July 23 declared monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern, its highest level of warning, following confirmed outbreaks in about 70 countries where the virus is not known. ‘has spread historically.
Federal leaders have spent weeks debating whether to declare monkeypox a public health emergency, and officials said the announcement planned for Thursday is part of a broader push to contain the virus. The announcement follows the White House’s decision this week to name Robert J. Fenton Jr., Jr., a longtime Federal Emergency Management Agency official, as response coordinator national to the virus.
HHS and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
US officials have sought strategies to increase access to monkeypox treatments and vaccines, with a limited supply of Jynennos, the only vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration to protect against the virus. Federal officials have identified about 1.6 million people as being at higher risk of monkeypox, but the US has only received enough doses of Jyennos to fully cover about 550,000 people.
More than 6,600 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in the United States since May 18, the vast majority occurring among men who have sex with men, a total that has roughly doubled every 8 days, but which experts believe that is a significant count. Officials have also reported at least five cases of smallpox in children, who are believed to have been infected through household transmission.
WHO officials Last week he advised men who have sex with men to temporarily reduce the number of sexual partners to try to reduce transmission.
What you need to know about monkey pox symptoms, treatments and protection
Although health officials have stressed that monkeypox poses far fewer risks than the coronavirus, with only a handful of deaths worldwide and none so far in the United States, the virus can cause fever, swollen lymph nodes, rashes skin and often painful lesions that can last for weeks and lead to scarring. The virus is also linked to more serious complications in children, pregnant women and people with immune conditions.
The infectious disease, which comes from the same family of viruses as smallpox, is spread primarily through close contact, and experts say they believe skin-to-skin exposure during sexual activity is a major source of transmission in the current outbreak. But they warn that the virus spreads through other forms of touch and can circulate outside the gay community, noting a handful of cases in women and children.
Some Biden officials have previously argued that declaring a monkeypox emergency would draw attention to the growing outbreak and bolster the nation’s overall response. For example, the emergency declaration can be used to force hospitals to report more data about their smallpox patients and allow the Food and Drug Administration to speed up medical countermeasures that might otherwise take months or years to undergo traditional regulatory reviews.
Federal officials also circulated an “options memo” Thursday on how a public health emergency would improve the nation’s monkeypox response, according to two officials who were not authorized to comment. POLITICO first reported the memo’s existence.
Many public health experts have also affirmed the WHO’s decision to declare a public health emergency, saying a coordinated global response is “essential” to combat the growing outbreak. House Oversight Speaker Carolyn B. Maloney (DN.Y.) last week called on HHS to declare a public health emergency, calling the move “a crucial step” in combating the spread of the virus .
But Becerra’s decision to declare monkeypox an emergency could lead to political complications for the White House, which has faced calls from advocates to declare gun violence a public health emergency and climate change as a national emergency. Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and reproductive health rights groups have also pressed the administration to declare access to abortion a public health emergency in the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned home Roe v. Wade and led to new restrictions on abortion across the country.
The Biden administration has also continued to renew public health emergency declarations, which expire every 90 days, for opioids and the coronavirus.