United States President Joe Biden on Sunday warned that an outbreak of the rare disease monkeypox should be a cause for concern, saying that if it were to continue spreading, it would be "consequential."
The Democrat said that health officials have not yet revealed the extent of the exposure to him yet but noted that it was something people should be concerned about. The president's remarks came before he boarded Air Force One to travel from South Korea to Japan. He said that his administration was working on figuring out what to do moving forward.
Joe Biden on Monkeypox
Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said that the United States already has vaccines against monkeypox readily available and can be deployed. He noted that the U.S. president has been getting regular updates from his health team regarding the evolving situation.
Almost a dozen countries have started to investigate "atypical" outbreaks of monkeypox, a disease that originated from the same family of viruses as smallpox. It is more commonly found in central and west Africa, as per USA Today.
The United States has so far recorded two cases of the disease, one in Massachusetts and another in New York City. Health officials have noted that human-to-human transmission of the monkeypox virus is considered uncommon.
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Federal officials have previously said that people who were exposed to the monkeypox virus, which has a slow incubation period, can be given existing smallpox vaccines to restrict the disease's severity. The U.S. president's first remarks regarding the recent outbreak came a day after a senior adviser for the World Health Organization (WHO) said that infection seemed to have been spreading through sexual contact.
According to The Guardian, WHO adviser David Heymann said that the situation seemed to be the outbreak's sexual form. The health official said that the genital form that was being spread sexually amplified its transmission around the world.
Treatment for Monkeypox
Public health authorities had already confirmed roughly 80 cases of monkeypox in nine European countries, as well as the U.S., Canada, and Australia. There were 50 other cases of suspected monkeypox infections that were waiting to be confirmed.
Massachusetts health officials said that the first case was recorded on Wednesday and noted that the patient had recently traveled to Canada. Later in the week of the first infection, a New York City resident tested positive for the virus that causes monkeypox. On Saturday, federal Centers for Disease Control were still investigating whether the illness was present.
The monkeypox virus originated from wild animals, including rodents and primates but would occasionally transfer to humans. The illness is known to cause fever, body aches, chills, and fatigue. It occasionally shows up in the United States, including last year when a couple of people who traveled to Nigeria tested positive.
While there is no specific treatment for monkeypox, there are existing treatments for the disease that was originally approved as a defense in case of a biological attack. The virus belongs to the orthopoxvirus family and has many similarities with smallpox.
The similarities between the two diseases allow treatments developed for smallpox to be used on people who have been infected with monkeypox. The latest drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat smallpox include Tpoxx (tecovirimat) and Tembexa (brincidofovir), Quartz reported.
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