The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Saturday following the health agency's second emergency on the disease.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern,"
Local health officials claim that vaccines can help curb the spread of monkeypox, which occurs in "cluster events."
Dr. Tedros claimed that despite the committee's inability to agree, he arrived at his conclusion after considering the five factors necessary to determine whether an outbreak qualifies as a public health emergency of worldwide concern, per CNN.
As he was designating monkeypox as a public health emergency of international concern, he noted: "For the moment this is an outbreak that's concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those who have multiple partners, that means that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right right groups."
Following its initial emergency committee meeting on June 23, WHO initially refrained from designating the monkeypox outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern.
According to the WHO, a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) is "an extraordinary event" that constitutes a "public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease" and "potentially requires a coordinated international response."
Monkeypox Cases in the US Jumps
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1,800 cases of monkeypox have been reported in the country two months after the first case was identified.
The fact that monkeypox is not as contagious or spreads quickly as COVID-19 is a modest source of relief. It also rarely requires hospitalization, as per a report from NPR.
Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, incident commander for the monkeypox response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that monkeypox is a "very different" disease.
"It's not spread easily. It requires direct, close contact. And most of the cases that we're aware of are associated with intimate contact and even sexual contacts," McQuiston noted.
The CDC is boosting testing capacity from 6,000 tests per week to 70,000 tests per week to identify infections and potential outbreak locations. The United States anticipates having 7 million doses of vaccines by the middle of next year. According to Dr. Walensky, the CDC continues to "prioritize both jurisdictions, seeing the greatest number of cases and communities of highest risk" as it has updated its "vaccine allocation strategy to Phase 2B."
First Monkeypox Cases in Children Detected
The CDC also confirmed the first two U.S. cases of monkeypox in children on Friday. Both cases are "likely the result of household transmission" and "had no contact with each other."One patient is a toddler who resides in California, while the second is a baby who is not a US resident but was "transiting through" Washington, D.C., during the test.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that children, particularly those under 8 years old, are "at increased risk" for developing severe monkeypox disease, according to CBS News.
The CDC only knew of adult instances of monkeypox at that time, authorities claimed last week. However, the organization noted that less than half of all cases had received supplementary demographic information from state and local health authorities.