The US health emergency declaration may come too late to stop the spread, experts say
Microbiologists at Aegis Sciences Corporation process tests for COVID-19 and monkeypox at their facility in Nashville, Tenn., on Thursday. ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
US President Joe Biden’s administration declared the country’s smallpox outbreak a public health emergency on Thursday, but many health experts fear it will be too late to contain the spread of infections.
Criticism of the White House’s response to the outbreak has been mounting, with experts saying authorities have been slow to distribute treatments and vaccines.
The White House statement indicates that the monkeypox virus now poses a significant risk to citizens. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is considering a second declaration that would empower federal officials to fast-track medical countermeasures, such as other potential treatments and vaccines, without going through comprehensive federal reviews.
This would also allow greater flexibility in how the current vaccine supply is administered, Becerra said.
About 6,600 monkeypox infections have been reported in the United States, a number that has risen sharply in recent weeks.
Lawrence Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University, said the health emergency declaration “signals the seriousness and purpose of the US government and sounds a global alarm.” But he told The Associated Press that the action was overdue.
Gostin said the government has been too cautious and should have declared a national emergency sooner.
On July 23, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak, with cases in more than 70 countries.
California, Illinois and New York have recently issued statements, as have New York City, San Francisco and San Diego County.
Since doctors diagnosed the first case in the United States on May 27, the virus has spread rapidly across the country, with the highest per capita rates in Washington, New York and Georgia.
More than 99 percent of infections occur among men who have sex with men.
The virus is mainly transmitted during close physical contact. So far, no deaths from the disease have been reported in the US.
The country now has the highest number of cases among non-endemic countries, and the number is expected to rise as surveillance and testing improve.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected by bites from rodents or small animals. Classification as endemic means that a disease has a constant presence in a population, but does not affect an alarming number of people, as is usually seen in a pandemic.
“Rarely Deadly”
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says of the virus: “The monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as the smallpox virus, the virus that causes smallpox. The symptoms of monkeypox are similar to those of smallpox, but milder, and monkeypox is rarely fatal. Chickenpox is not related to chickenpox.”
Concerns are growing that the United States may have lost the ability to contain the monkeypox virus. Some public health experts have pointed the finger at the administration for its slowness in deploying vaccines and treatments.
“The window to contain monkeypox is closing fast,” Gostin warned in an interview with CNN late last month. He had called for the United States to declare a national public health emergency and make more vaccine doses available.
“I think it’s still possible to contain, but it’s also possible for this to become endemic in the United States,” he said.
Supplies of a smallpox vaccine called Jynneos have been limited even as demand rises. The administration has been criticized for moving too slowly to expand the number of doses.
Federal officials have identified about 1.6 million people as being at increased risk of monkeypox, but the US has received enough doses of Jynneos to fully cover only about 550,000 people.
The vaccine shortage was caused in part because the Department of Health and Human Services failed to request from the start that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already possessed be packaged for distribution, The New York Times reported , citing several unnamed administration officials familiar with the matter. .
The government is now distributing about 1.1 million vaccine doses, less than a third of the 3.5 million that health officials now estimate are needed to fight the outbreak. It does not anticipate the next delivery, of 500,000 doses, until October.