Joe Biden appoints team to tackle fast-spreading monkeypox outbreak

0

President Joe Biden has appointed a new team to lead the US response to monkeypox following declarations of emergency by California and Illinois and mounting criticism of the administration’s response to the outbreak.

The White House team, appointed on Tuesday, will be led by Robert Fenton, an administrator at the Federal Emergency and Management Agency. It will work with state authorities to increase equitable access to testing, vaccines and treatments for the virus, the White House said in a statement.

“This team will allow the Biden administration to further accelerate and strengthen its monkeypox response,” said Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser.

California and Illinois on Monday followed New York in issuing states of emergency in an attempt to bolster vaccination efforts, boost public awareness of the growing outbreak and slow the spread of monkeypox infections.

Monkeypox typically causes fever and skin lesions but usually clears up on its own without treatment. However, in rare cases it can lead to medical complications and even death, with babies, children and people with underlying immune deficiencies most at risk.

Government data published on Monday show the US accounts for about a quarter of the 22,100 reported global infections of the virus, which spreads via skin-to-skin contact and is usually found in west and central Africa.

Last week the World Health Organization classified the worldwide monkeypox outbreak as a “public health emergency of international concern”, putting it on par with diseases such as Covid-19, Ebola and polio.

Experts say shortages of available vaccines and delays in testing have hampered the US government response to the outbreak, a point highlighted by long queues of people waiting to get vaccinated in San Francisco and New York in recent days.

Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the US government’s response had been reactive, rather than proactive, and had enabled the virus to gain a foothold in the country.

“Testing was very flawed just like it was with Covid-19 in the early days,” he said. “Testing was restricted only to CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) affiliated labs, which created a lot of bureaucracy and red tape that made it very difficult for people to get tested.”

Adalja said bureaucracy and red tape had made it difficult to get vaccines to people most at risk of contracting the virus.

Most of the infections registered by the WHO have been among men who have sex with men. Last week four prominent LGBT+ organisations in the US sent a letter to the CDC demanding more action to combat the spread of the virus and change the name of the virus from monkeypox to reduce stigma and discrimination.

Stay connected with us on social media platform for instant update click here to join our  Twitter, & Facebook

We are now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@TechiUpdate) and stay updated with the latest Technology headlines.

For all the latest Health & Fitness News Click Here 

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! Rapidtelecast.com is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.
Leave a comment