US declares monkeypox a public health emergency
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The United States has declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency.
The decision, announced Thursday by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, came as the U.S. case count surpassed 6,600 as of Aug. 3, an increase of around 2,000 cases in just a week.
“We are prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously, and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus,” Becerra said during a press briefing.
Newly named White House national monkeypox response coordinator Robert Fenton said the declaration will help accelerate the response and allow the exploration of strategies to improve the distribution of vaccines and testing and the collection of data from jurisdictions around the country.
“This virus is moving fast. It’s a unique outbreak,” Fenton, a longtime official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said during the briefing. “The action we are announcing will allow us to accelerate our efforts.”
CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, said the U.S. needs enough doses of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos to vaccinate the estimated 1.6 million to 1.7 million people who are at the highest risk for monkeypox, including men who have sex with men. Becerra said more than 600,000 doses have been delivered to providers so far.
The vaccine is administered in two doses, but FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, MD, said one solution being explored to extend the current supply is to allow providers to draw up to five doses from the existing one-dose vials.
The one-fifth-sized doses would be administered intradermally to improve the immune response to the vaccine, Califf said.
“In recent days, it's become clear to all of us that given the continued spread of the virus, we're at a critical inflection point, dictating the need for additional solutions to address the rise in infection rates,” Califf said.
“This is really nothing highly unusual,” he said about the smaller vaccine doses. “It's done in other situations routinely” — including for yellow fever — “so we're very confident about the administration of the dose.”
Becerra said the U.S. has the capacity to process 80,000 tests for monkeypox each week. Five commercial laboratory companies in the U.S. — Aegis Science, Labcorp, Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and Sonic Healthcare — have all begun testing for the virus.
The U.S. declaration came more than a week after WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, MSc, declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
“There is no reason we can’t stay ahead of this,” Fenton said.
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