The US toll topped 6,600 on Wednesday, almost all cases among men who have sex with men. “We are ready to take our response to the next level to address this virus and urge every American to take monkeypox seriously,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a briefing. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register The statement will improve the availability of data on monkeypox infections needed for response, said US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, speaking with Bacerra. The US government has come under pressure for its handling of the outbreak. The disease began to spread in Europe before moving to the United States, which now has the most cases in the world. Vaccines and treatments were lacking, and the disease was often left to historically underfunded sexual health clinics to manage. read more The World Health Organization has declared monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern,” the highest level of alert. The WHO statement last month sought to spark a coordinated international response and unlock funding for collaboration on vaccines and treatments. read more Governments are developing vaccines and treatments that were originally approved for smallpox but also work for monkeypox. The U.S. government has distributed 600,000 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s ( BAVA.CO ) Jynneos vaccine and developed 14,000 of Siga Technologies’ ( SIGA.O ) TPOXX treatment, although they did not disclose how many have been administered. Walensky said the government aims to vaccinate more than 1.6 million high-risk people. US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf said the agency is considering releasing more Jynneos vaccine doses by allowing doctors to draw 5 doses of vaccine from each vial instead of 1 dose using a different subcutaneous injection method. US President Joe Biden this month appointed two federal officials to coordinate his administration’s response to monkeypox, following emergency declarations from California, Illinois and New York. read more The disease, first identified in monkeys in 1958, has mild symptoms such as fever, aches and pus-filled skin lesions, and people tend to recover from it within two to four weeks, the WHO says. It is spread through close physical contact and is rarely fatal. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, told Reuters on Thursday that it was critical to engage leaders from the gay community as part of efforts to contain the epidemic, but warned against stigmatizing the lifestyle. “Community engagement always proves successful,” Fauci said. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Manas Mishra and Amruta Khandekar in Bengaluru, Ismail Shakil in Ottawa, Caroline Humer and Leela de Kretser Editing by Anil D’Silva, Deepa Babington and Howard Goller Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
title: “Us Declares Monkeypox Outbreak A Public Health Emergency " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-06” author: “Danielle Russ”
“This public health emergency will allow us to explore additional strategies to get vaccines and treatments faster to affected communities. And it will allow us to get more data from jurisdictions so we can effectively monitor and attack this the outbreak,” said Robert Fenton. The White House’s newly appointed national smallpox response coordinator said at the briefing. In the past decade, national emergency declarations like this have previously been made only for the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid crisis and the 2017 Zika virus outbreak. As with COVID-19, the official said Becerra’s move to declare a state of emergency could unlock a wide range of flexibility in funding and regulations to deal with the spread of monkeypox. The public health emergency declaration could pave the way for the CDC to deploy more staff to respond to the outbreak, officials said, as well as compel hospitals to share more data on tracking monkeypox patients. It could also help pave the way for resources to scale up vaccinations. As of last week, the administration says it has distributed another 266,000 doses of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine to states and territories that have ordered doses. Another 150,000 doses originally scheduled for delivery by vaccine maker Bavarian Nordic in October have been moved to September. Federal health officials also told reporters they are considering a separate move that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to obtain emergency use authorizations that could ease access to treatments and vaccines for the monkeypox outbreak. Such an authorization, first floated by a National Institutes of Health official earlier this week at a meeting with the World Health Organization, could allow vaccinators to quintuple their supply by injecting smaller “intradermal” doses into the skin, rather than the “subcutaneous” method currently approved for Jynneos. “We feel very good about the intradermal approach and probably within the next few days, in a short period of time, we will make a final decision on that,” said FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf. Federal health authorities also have millions of years-expired doses of Jynneos on hand, which are now being tested by Bavarian Nordic. If they prove viable — which a spokesman acknowledged to CBS News earlier this month was “highly unlikely” — the batches could be cleared under an emergency use permit. Officials have said for weeks that they were considering the move as the number of cases has risen and demand for shots has far outstripped supply across the country. The move comes as a growing number of jurisdictions, including several states and cities, as well as the World Health Organization have declared the outbreak an emergency. Dr David Agus answers questions about monkeypox and COVID-19 at 04:10 This week, President Biden also invited officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the CDC to lead the nation’s response to monkeypox from the White House. On Wednesday, the CDC said it had recorded at least 6,617 infections across the country. All but two states — Montana and Wyoming — have reported detecting at least one infection. “We expect cases to continue to rise as we had more access to testing, people had more access to testing, before it dropped again,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Valensky. The majority of infections are still believed to be spread through close intimate contact between men who have sex with men. Although no deaths have been reported, patients often suffer sometimes excruciatingly painful rashes and lesions that can last for weeks. The CDC currently estimates that between 1.6 and 1.7 million Americans are among the groups currently prioritized for the vaccine: people living with HIV, men who have sex with men, and others at high risk for HIV . Doctors have also responded to a handful of infections in other groups at higher risk of severe disease, such as pregnant women and young children. Beyond freeing up additional leverage in the federal bureaucracy to respond to the outbreak, officials said they hoped the statement would raise awareness about the growing epidemic. “This is a very clear statement of the value of the lives of people belonging to the LGBTQ community,” said Dr. Dimitris Daskalakis, deputy White House coordinator for the monkeypox response. Only about 10% of the country’s monkeypox testing capacity is currently used up, which works out to about 8,000 smears from monkeypox cases a week. Officials say they expect the number of people with suspected monkeypox symptoms seeking diagnoses, as well as doctors moving to test for the disease, to increase after the declaration. “I think along with the progress and acceleration of some of the work that we’re doing, I think it also represents a significant commitment from the administration to the community,” Daskalakis said. More Alexander Tin CBS News reporter covering public health and the pandemic.
