A senior White House health official said on Friday that the Biden administration is considering a public health emergency.
The administration is considering declaring a public health emergency in order to bolster the U.S. response to the outbreak.
There isn't a final decision on this that I know of. There is a very active conversation at HHS.
A public health emergency can be declared by the Health and Human Services Secretary. Federal financial assistance can be used to respond to a disease outbreak, if a declaration is made.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 2,500 monkeypox cases have been reported in the U.S. In New York, California, Illinois, Florida, D.C. and Georgia, there are large outbreaks.
Congress is scrutinizing the Biden administration's response to the outbreak. A group of House Democrats wrote a letter to the president urging him to declare a public health emergency.
Senate Health Committee Chair Patty Murray wrote a letter to the Secretary of HHS expressing her concern about the US response to the outbreak. Some patients and health-care providers don't have the resources to respond to a monkeypox outbreak.
Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said last week that demand for the vaccine is out of stock. Many people are having a hard time getting a vaccine.
More than 300,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine have been sent to city and state health departments by the U.S. The FDA is in the process of approving an additional 786,000 doses for distribution in the U.S., which will be stored at the manufacturer's facility in Danes.
This week and next week, some of those shots will arrive in the U.S. Once FDA authorization is complete, the doses can be delivered. According to the HHS, the U.S. will get another 5 million doses in the middle of the next decade.
Skin-to-skin contact is how monkeypox is spread. Men who have sex with men are at the highest risk of getting the disease, but anyone can catch it. The virus can cause blisters that can be very painful, but people generally recover in a few weeks. There have been no deaths in the US.
There are two confirmed cases of monkeypox in children. There are two cases, one of which is a toddler in California and the other a baby who is not a US resident. The cases are not related and the children probably caught the virus from their household.
According to the CDC, the children are in good health and are being treated with tecovir. The CDC is working to make it easier for clinicians to prescribe tecovir to patients.
There is an additional layer of bureaucracy right now because it is only FDA approved for smallpox. There is a milder form of monkeypox than there is the more severe form.
Gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men are the majority of patients with monkeypox.
McQuiston said that while the outbreak is spreading in a particular social network, they need to be vigilant for it and ready to respond.
According to the CDC, the U.S. has the ability to conduct 80,000 monkeypox tests in a week. It can take weeks from the initial exposure to develop the blisters caused by the virus. The U.S. doesn't have an accurate picture of how many people are affected by the disease because patients can only be tested once they start showing symptoms.
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