Monday 8 August 2022 04:43 PM Former FDA chief says its still possible to get monkeypox outbreak 'back in the ... trends now
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Despite the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declaring monkeypox a public health emergency last week, one key expert is still hopeful that the virus can be contained before it develops into a full fledged outbreak.
Dr Scott Gottlieb, former head of the Food and Drug Administration and current board member at pharma-giant Pfizer, told CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday that while difficult, it is possible to prevent monkeypox from becoming an endemic virus - a prospect officials likely failed with Covid.
He says that the response to the virus has to be wider to control it, though. At the moment, testing has mainly been reserved to just gay and bisexual men - who make up a overwhelming majority of cases. Gottlieb believes that more cases would be found if testing was expanded beyond just that community.
His comments come days after HHS declared a public health emergency over the virus on Thursday. The 7,510 recorded cases are the most of any country in the world so far. Per capita, the nation's one case per million residents on August 5 is around half of the 1.93 per million cases being recorded in Spain.
‘There’s a potential to get this back in the box but its going to be very difficult at this point,' Gottlieb said.
'We’re continuing to look for cases in the community of men who have sex with men, its primarily spreading in that community, but there's no question it has spread
