A Northwell Health staff member holds the monkeypox vaccine in Cherry Grove on Fire Island, New York, where the monkeypox vaccines were administered on July 14, 2022.
James Carbon | Newsday | Getty Images
The Biden administration is considering declaring a public health emergency in response to a growing monkeypox outbreak, a senior White House health official said Friday.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s Covid response coordinator, said the administration is considering how a public health emergency declaration could bolster the US response to the outbreak.
“There is no final decision on this that I know of,” Jha said. “This is an ongoing but very active conversation at HHS.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has the authority to declare a public health emergency under the Public Health Services Act. A declaration can help mobilize federal financial assistance to respond to a disease outbreak.
The U.S. has reported more than 2,500 cases of monkeypox so far in 44 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The largest outbreaks are in New York, California, Illinois, Florida, the District of Columbia and Georgia.
The Biden administration’s response to the outbreak has come under scrutiny from Congress as infections rise. Fifty House Democrats in a letter to President Joe Biden this week urged the administration to declare a public health emergency in response to the outbreak.
Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, in a letter to HHS Secretary Becerra, said she was concerned about the U.S. response to the outbreak. Murray said some patients and health care providers lack the information and resources they need to test for monkeypox and respond to the outbreak.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said last week that demand for the vaccines is outpacing available supplies. Many people struggle to get vaccinated amid long queues outside clinics.
The US has sent more than 300,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine, called Jynneos, to city and state health departments so far, Jha told reporters on Friday. The Food and Drug Administration is in the process of authorizing an additional 786,000 doses stored at manufacturer Bavarian Nordic’s facility in Denmark for U.S. distribution
Jha said some of those photos have started shipping and will arrive in the U.S. this week and next. Doses can be delivered to city and state health departments after FDA approval, Jha said. The U.S. has also ordered another 5 million doses, which will be delivered by mid-2023, according to HHS.
Monkeypox is primarily spread through skin-to-skin contact during sex. Currently, men who have sex with men are at the greatest risk of infection, but anyone can catch the virus through close physical contact. People usually recover in two to four weeks, but the virus causes lesions that can be very painful. No deaths have been reported in the US
The CDC on Friday confirmed the first two cases of monkeypox in children. One case is a toddler in California and the other is a non-US resident infant. The cases are unrelated, and the children likely caught the virus through transmission in their household, according to the CDC.
Both children are in good health and are receiving the antiviral treatment tecoxiramit, according to the CDC. Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, a CDC official, told reporters Friday that the health agency is working to make it easier for clinicians to prescribe tecoxiramit to patients.
Prescribing tecociramit for monkeypox comes with an extra layer of red tape right now because it’s only FDA-approved for smallpox. Monkeypox belongs to the same virus family as smallpox, but causes a milder illness.
McQuiston said more than 97 percent of monkeypox patients who provide demographic information are gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men.
“While this outbreak is spreading on a particular social network right now, I think we’ve been sending messages from the beginning that there may be cases that happen outside of those networks and that we need to be vigilant about that and be ready to respond and to send messages about it,” McQuiston told reporters.
The U.S. has the capacity to conduct 80,000 monkeypox tests a week after bringing on board several commercial labs this month, according to the CDC. But the tests tamponade the lesions caused by the virus, which can take weeks from initial exposure to develop. That means the U.S. likely doesn’t have an accurate picture of how many people are infected because patients can only be tested after symptoms appear.
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