"There’s no final decision on this that I’m aware of," Jha explained to reporters on Friday. "It’s an ongoing but a very active conversation at HHS."
The CDC is studying the first two cases of monkeypox that have been identified in children in the US The two cases are unrelated and probably the outcome of household transmission, the CDC explained. One case is a toddler who is a resident of California. The other is an infant who is not a US resident.
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Thus far, the US has shipped over 300,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine to city and state health departments, announced Jha. The FDA is in the process of authorizing a further 786,000 doses awaiting distribution in the US.
Presently, no deaths have been reported in the US, yet over 2,500 monkeypox cases have emerged thus far across 44 states, according to the CDC. The largest outbreaks are in the densely populated areas of New York, California, Illinois, Florida, DC, and Georgia.
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The Biden Administration has come under fire from Congress in handling the monkeypox outbreak. Fifty House Democrats wrote a letter to President Joe Biden this week, calling for the administration to announce a public health emergency.
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Health specialists have recently debated whether monkeypox is now a sexually transmitted disease, as it primarily spreads through skin-to-skin contact during sex. Men who have sex with men are at the highest risk of infection, yet anyone can catch the virus through close physical contact. In most cases, recovery takes two to four weeks, yet the virus causes lesions that can be very painful.
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Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, a CDC official, explained to reporters Friday that the health agency is working to make it easier for clinicians to prescribe tecovirimat to patients.
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Prescribing tecovirimat for monkeypox comes with another layer of bureaucracy because it is only FDA-approved for smallpox. Monkeypox is in the same virus family as smallpox, yet it causes milder disease.
McQuiston announced that over 97% of patients with monkeypox who provide demographic information are gay, bisexual or different men who have sex with men.
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