The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has activated an emergency operations unit for monkeypox that signals the early stages of a public health problem.
The Emergency Operations Center (EOC) was activated on Tuesday to increase operational support to deal with a monkeypox outbreak.
As a reference, the EOC was activated for Covid-19 in January 2020, the same day that the first case of coronavirus was detected in the US.
“EOC activation is helping to further complement the ongoing work of CDC staff to respond to this outbreak,” said Scott Pauley, CDC press officer. “Doctors and public health departments are already contacting the CDC to report and investigate cases of monkeypox,” he added.
There are currently 300 CDC staff members working on smallpox of the monkey with local and state medical staff, and the EOC is expected to improve these measures.
As of Monday, the CDC had recorded 306 cases of monkeypox in 28 states, with the highest numbers in California and New York, respectively. There are currently 66 cases in California, 63 in New York and 45 in Illinois. The rest of the states, for the most part, have less than 10 reported cases.
Epidemiologist and health economist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding noted Tuesday that the projected number of cases of monkeypox in August is 100,000 worldwide and urged the World Health Organization to take action.
Earlier on Sunday, the WHO said that while the overall rate of spread of monkeypox is alarming, it has not yet raised alarms for a global emergency.
On Monday, the White House announced that the administration is allocating about 300,000 doses of vaccines, with an estimated 1.6 million doses available over the coming months.