Gottlieb said Sunday it may be too late to control and contain the virus and compared the response to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, saying the United States is making “many of the same mistakes,” such as the lack of early tests. lit and not enough vaccines are distributed to the community.
“We could have gotten control of that if we had been more aggressive up front,” Gottlieb told CBS’s “Face the Nation”.
“I think the window to get control of this and contain it has probably closed. If it hasn’t closed, it’s sure to start closing,” he said.
But Walensky on Monday defended the work of his agency.
“It is true that we have work to do, here and internationally, and we are likely to see more cases of monkeypox in the short term, but it is possible to significantly decrease the number of cases and contain the current outbreak of monkeypox through education and increasing testing and access to vaccines, all priorities in which we have made spectacular progress, ”he said in a statement to CNN.
Walensky said the CDC has expanded the definition of the monkeypox case to encourage health care providers to test the virus and has increased communications about the outbreak. Federal health officials have also “drastically increased the availability of vaccines, with more than 130,000 doses already delivered and thousands more on the way.”
Gottlieb emphasized the need for smallpox smallpox testing as the global outbreak continues to spread.
“We’re probably detecting only a fraction of the actual cases because we had, for a long time, a very limited case definition about who was tested and, in general, we’re looking at the community of men who have sex with men and ETS clinics. So we’re looking there, we find cases, but it’s a fact that right now there are cases outside this community. We’re not picking them up because we’re not looking.
CDC data show that there are 1,814 cases of probable or confirmed smallpox in the United States as of Friday evening. Most of these cases have involved men having sex with men. The CDC said Friday that there have been eight cases of monkeypox diagnosed among people who were assigned women at birth and that no cases have been reported in children or adolescents.
Gottlieb told CBS that he believes smallpox “has spread more widely in the community” and that it wouldn’t surprise him that there are “thousands of cases right now.”
“Now, this is firmly integrated into the community. And while it won’t explode because it’s harder for this virus to spread, it’s likely to be persistent. You’ll have it as a kind of fact of life, maybe spreading like a disease of sexual transmission but also get out of these environments, ”he said.
Walensky said in his statement that the CDC has increased testing capacity from 6,000 initially to up to 80,000 samples per week with the help of five commercial labs in addition to the agency’s lab response network.
“Having commercial lab tests for monkeypox makes it more convenient for suppliers to access the tests by using existing supplier-to-lab relationships,” he said.
“We continue to update the public, partners, and the community on how to protect ourselves through daily outreach on our website, media briefings, and member calls,” involving more than 90 partner organizations, including state partners. , tribal, local or territorial “. , public health organizations, clinical, community and LGBTQ + organizations that send it to their members, ”he said.