Varma is among the people who think global containment of the outbreak is out of reach. “Most people can’t even spend five days … in isolation for Covid,” he said. During that time, they should be in isolation, but that’s a big ask, said Jay Varma, director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response at Weill Cornell Medicine.

People who contract monkeypox are infectious until all their lesions heal, a process that can take several weeks. I think this is the trickiest part,” she said.

“We are piling up one difficult outbreak on top of a pandemic and I think it is too much for the public health services and authorities all over. Fortunately, the latter has been taken off her plate. So we are all over our heads,” said Agoritsa Baka, principal expert for emergency preparedness and response at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm.īaka noted that for a while this spring, she was involved in the response to three health emergencies - the ongoing pandemic, the burgeoning monkeypox situation, and the investigation into unexplained cases of severe hepatitis in young children. “I think it’s a daunting task for the countries. NYC will use a one-dose monkeypox vaccine strategy to stretch supplies, despite FDA, CDC warnings against the moveĪt the same time, there are significant challenges, not the least of which is the fact that two and a half years into the Covid-19 pandemic, public health workforces around the globe are running on fumes. … We have vaccines that are already available, even vaccines with indications for monkeypox. “It’s really unfortunate because we do have the tools. “The probability of containment is diminishing daily,” said Anne Rimoin, a monkeypox expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. There have been more cases, and a number of exported cases have landed in the U.K., the U.S., Israel, and Singapore. It’s been clear for the past few years that monkeypox transmission has changed - and not for the better - in Nigeria, one of the countries where the virus lives in rodents and small animals. Others bemoan the fact that the world allowed itself to get in this position in the first place. In an effort not to repeat the errors of the early days of HIV, some of the early messaging around monkeypox wasn’t specific enough about who was at most risk. And that includes countries and jurisdictions that don’t have a case yet.”Ĭritics of the containment efforts are legion, arguing in social media platforms and published commentaries that access to testing has been inadequate, rollout of vaccine has been too slow, the public health communications have been too tentative. Because for it to be done requires that all countries pull out all the stops. “I think it can be done, but I’m not necessarily optimistic about it. “Maybe optimistic is not quite the right word,” she said in an interview from Geneva, where the WHO is headquartered. Lewis was more cautious in her assessment. And there’s a lot of that happening right now,” Walensky said. “Within this community there was a lot of high-risk before we were able to test enough, educate enough, both on the provider side and the patient side. Walensky’s optimism in this case derives from the fact that, to date, the virus appears to be spreading mainly within a defined community - one that has mobilized to get out the word of the risk its members face. which of course is only one of the countries that will need to stop transmission if the outbreak is to be contained. She noted that when speaking of the prospects for containment, she was talking about the situation in the U.S. I am so not giving up yet,” said Walensky, who described herself as someone who is in general “pretty optimistic” but who is not “an eternal optimist.” Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Rosamund Lewis, the World Health Organization’s technical lead on monkeypox, expressed the belief that with a lot of effort, transmission in the population of men who have sex with men can be stopped. Not everyone is categorical - or pessimistic. “We think, unfortunately, that monkeypox may become endemic among the MSM community.” Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, an organization that represents sexual health clinics. “The STI field is preparing for the long haul here,” said David C. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More

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