White House takes flak on monkeypox late start

LOS ANGELES－Monkeypox cases in the United States have been climbing rapidly, topping over 11,000 cases, while media and experts have blamed US President Joe Biden administration's response to contain the outbreak.

A total of 11,177 monkeypox cases had been reported across the country as of Friday, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New York had the most cases with 2,295, followed by California with 1,945 and Florida with 1,085.

So far, the US has the world's highest tally of monkeypox cases.

Since the CDC confirmed the first monkeypox case in the US in a Massachusetts man on May 18, the country has seen a continuous surge of cases.

Health experts said given the testing bottlenecks, monkeypox cases are likely being tremendously undercounted.

A series of setbacks in the Biden administration's response to addressing monkeypox allowed the disease to gain a foothold in the country, reported Politico.

Setbacks included clunky early testing protocols, slow vaccine distribution, a lack of federal funding to help state and local governments respond to the outbreak, and patchy communication with communities most affected by the virus, the report said.

"It may be too late to stop monkeypox from circulating in the US permanently," it said.

Epidemiologists, public health officials and doctors are warning that the US government is running out of time to stop the virus from spreading in the US population more broadly.

Monkeypox is yet another global health crisis fueled by US governmental neglect, said an op-ed on media site Truthout.

If the US government had acted with a sense of urgency right away and distributed the vaccine immediately to those most at risk, then it is possible that monkeypox would not have become such a crisis, the report said.

Three months into the monkeypox outbreak, the federal government finally declared monkeypox a health emergency on Aug 4.

"But the decision may have come too late," reported US news and opinion website Vox.

Accurate data is critical for public health, and the US does not have it, the report said.

"With monkeypox already a global public health emergency, it's vital for the data to be available, promptly and accurately, to coordinate an effective public health response," the report said.

Xinhua