A public health emergency has been declared in the United States after the authorities confirmed over 6,600 monkeypox cases.
According to the official reports, monkeypox infections continue rising across the States with as many as 6,617 cases being confirmed as of Thursday afternoon.
Secretary Xavier Becerra of the Department of Health and Human Services has since announced the implementation of an emergency status and urged all Americans to be cautious and take the infectious disease seriously.
Thanks to the emergency status, the officials and decision-makers on the federal level will have more options when it comes to testing, hospitalizations, and data management.
“In light of all of these developments and the evolving circumstances on the ground, I want to make an announcement today that I will be declaring a public health emergency on monkeypox,” Becerra said.
“We are prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus.”
Meanwhile, it has come to light that confirmed monkeypox cases have been rising by over one hundred percent a day for the last few weeks.
As Rochelle Walensky of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted, however, it isn’t clear if the surge in recorded cases is due to the fast spreading of the virus or due to old cases being picked up thanks to better testing availability.
The state-wide health emergency comes shortly after Illinois, New York, and California declared their own health emergencies over rising infections.
“Two things are happening at once that I think account for the rise in cases that we are seeing. One is the more widely available testing, and two is potentially more infections that are actually happening as a result of infections that happened two or three weeks ago,” CDC Director Dr Rochelle Walensky said.
“It is hard to disentangle those right now, but we do expect cases to continue to rise as we get more access to testing people and have more access to testing people.”
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