The monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. began in Massachusetts in mid-May and now the virus has spread to all but six states in the country as of June 19.
The CDC reported that the number of Monkeypox cases nationwide was nearing 2,000.
“We’re up to nearly 2000 cases and that’s only the tip of the iceberg, right? And we know there’s probably many more cases in the community that are going undetected. We’re just now ramping up testing capability. We’re just now expanding vaccinations and having more doses available but the demand is certainly outstripping supply,” Dr. Syra Madad said, a Senior Director at the Institute for Diseases and Disaster Management in New York City.
While Madad has focused much of the last 2 years working on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she’s now added the current Monkeypox outbreak to her workload.
Madad, who was featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak”, told Spectrum News that she now sees similarities between the U.S. response to the COVID-19 and its response to spread of Monkeypox.
“It’s an absolute feeling of déjà vu and here we go again. In that sense, it’s very unfortunate that it had to take global spread of monkey pox for us to get political attention to this,” Madad said.
The Biden administration is in the midst of a monkeypox vaccine rollout in major cities, but local officials in those locations have also said they don’t have enough to meet demand.
Currently, most monkeypox infections in the country have been among gay and bisexual men, but anyone can get it through direct personal contact with someone who’s already infected.
According to the CDC, “Monkeypox is a rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus. Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. Monkeypox symptoms are similar to smallpox symptoms, but milder, and monkeypox is rarely fatal.”
“You know, there are colleagues of mine, where there are two camps. There’s a camp of ‘we still have the opportunity to contain the monkey pox’ and we can prevent it from becoming an established virus in our community. Then there’s the camp of public health experts that say, ‘that window has closed, that ship has sailed’ and we’re now at a point where this is going to happen in the communities for an ongoing period of time,” Madad explained.
Madad said she is trying to remain optimistic and hopes that the latter won’t be true. She believes the outcome will all depend on whether the country ramps up vaccination efforts and how quickly they can do that.
“We’re now in that ‘Just-In-Time’ approach. We’re doing it ‘Just-In-Time’. Unfortunately, that’s never going to be the optimal strategy and the optimal strategy is ‘Just-In-Case’,” Madad said.
The situation with the current Monkeypox outbreak comes at a time when congressional support for COVID-19 funding seems to be waning.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration has to reallocate $10 billion in pre-approved COVID-response spending and use it to order COVID-19 vaccine doses after Congress failed to approve a funding request from the White House.
According to a White House official, the reallocation of funds allowed the U.S. to get in line to get some additional lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine doses for the fall, including next-generation vaccines if available, and will allow them to buy additional lifesaving treatments.
The official added that despite the reallocation without additional funding, the U.S. may not have the funds needed to secure enough vaccines for all Americans who may want them in the fall.
