(RightIsRight.co) – President Joe Biden’s administration has declared the monkeypox outbreak in the United States a “public health emergency.”
The Department of Health and Human Services made the declaration on Thursday afternoon, with a total of only 6,617 people across the nation infected with the monkeypox virus.
“In light of all of these developments and the evolving circumstances on the ground, I want to make an announcement today that I will be declaring a public health emergency on monkeypox,” Biden’s Health Secretary, Xavier Becerra, told a press conference, as cited by The Daily Mail.
“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,” the HHS Secretary added.
The head of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, admitted that the government was considering declaring the monkeypox emergency last week, but it wanted to double-check whether the outbreak isn’t slowing down.
“Two things are happening at once that I think account for the rise in cases that we are seeing. One is the more widely available testing, and two is potentially more infections that are actually happening as a result of infections that happened two or three weeks ago,” she explained.
“It is hard to disentangle those right now, but we do expect cases to continue to rise as we get more access to testing people and have more access to testing people,” the CDC director added.
Walensky emphasized that the US is using only about 10% of its monkeypox testing capacity – about 1,000 out of 10,000 swabs daily, which is why she urged sending more swabs to laboratories.
CDC data shows that new infections have been growing by more than 100 per day over the past three weeks.
The public health emergency declaration on the federal level will open up more resources to states, provide for deploying federal officials nationwide, and improve the collection of data on tests, infections, and hospitalizations.
The states of California, New York, and Illinois, which so far have the most significant monkeypox outbreaks, declared public health emergencies on their own last week.
Two weeks ago, the World Health Organization declared a global public health emergency as the virus has been registered in 70 countries worldwide.
What is your opinion? Do you believe monkeypox is a public health emergency in the United States of America? Or do you think the Biden administration has a different reason for declaring an emergency? Please share your thoughts by emailing [email protected]. Thank you, and have a good weekend.
