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US at risk of losing control over monkeypox as cases rise: Experts

Monday, 04 July 2022 5:30 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 04 July 2022 5:30 PM ]

The US has stepped up a vaccination program to reach people at the highest risk of contracting monkeypox.

Infectious disease experts and public health advocates warn that the Biden administration has been too slow to respond to the monkeypox outbreak as cases continue to rise in the United States.

The response to monkeypox has been inadequate and reflective of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, characterized by a shortage of testing and a sluggish vaccine rollout, experts say.

“Where we have lagged is streamlining testing, making vaccines available, streamlining access to the best therapeutics. All three areas have been bureaucratic and slow, and that means we haven’t contained this outbreak,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD), according to The Hill.

There were more than 450 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the United States as of Friday. But infectious disease experts say the real number could be much higher as the virus is spreading undetected in many areas of the country.

Unlike coronavirus, monkeypox is not a novel virus, and the strategies to curb its spread are well known.

The Biden administration announced last week that it was accelerating its vaccine rollout to inoculate those at higher risks of contracting the virus.

Critics say the efforts may be coming too late, as was the case in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the US lost crucial time to get a jump on controlling the disease.

“We’ve been sort of screaming for a month about how bad the diagnostic situation is for monkeypox. And that really was a clear error, preventable, and it’s very clear that this administration has not learned lessons from early COVID,” said James Krellenstein, co-founder of the HIV treatment advocacy group Prep4All.

Administration officials, however, say they are confident in their approach to prevent an outbreak.

“We as a global community have known about it for decades. We know how it spreads. We have tests that help identify people who are infected. We have vaccines that are highly effective against it,” White House coronavirus response coordinator Ashish Jha said during a recent briefing.

The US health sector is currently underfunded and stretched thin after over two years of grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, experts warn.

“I think we’ll continue to repeat these mistakes because that’s been our track record. That’s been our track record. We’ve had, what, more than five or six waves of COVID, and we seem every time to be a little bit caught off guard,” said Jon Andrus, an adjunct professor of global health at George Washington University.

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