Comment San Francisco and New York state declared public health emergencies Thursday amid a growing monkeypox outbreak, the latest in an escalation of measures in response to the fast-spreading virus. The action by two of the hardest-hit areas comes after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency last weekend and as the Biden administration weighs a national emergency declaration. More than 40 percent of the nation’s 4,907 confirmed monkeypox cases have been reported in California and New York. San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) declared a local public health emergency Thursday, noting that monkeypox cases had nearly doubled, to 261, in a week. He said the move would mobilize resources, speed up emergency planning and allow future costs to be reimbursed by the state and federal governments. What you need to know about monkeypox symptoms, treatments and protection California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), who had called for the emergency declaration, said the decision would make it easier to expand testing and vaccines and pressure the federal government to take the outbreak more seriously. “It’s a powerful statement to the country and the world about the need to act decisively and forcefully,” Wiener said in an interview. After New York state recorded more than 1,200 cases, state Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett on Thursday declared an imminent public health threat, retroactive to June 1. “This statement means that local health departments engaged in response and prevention activities will be able to access additional reimbursements from the state, after other federal and state funding sources are maximized, to protect all New Yorkers and limit the spread of the virus.” monkey pox in our communities’. Bassett said in a press release. Monkeypox infections result in an illness that lasts several weeks with symptoms such as fever, swollen lymph nodes, and a rash that can spread all over the body. No deaths have been reported in the US, but some patients have reported severe pain from lesions. More than 18,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in more than 70 countries since July 2022. Here’s what you need to know about how it spreads. (Video: Joy Yi, Fenit Nirappil/The Washington Post, Photo: CDC/The Washington Post) The outbreak has been overwhelmingly concentrated in men who have sex with men. Gay leaders like Wiener and longtime HIV activists have urged health officials to act decisively to curb monkeypox and avoid repeating the mistakes of the AIDS crisis, when the suffering of gay men was minimized and the world failed to act. quickly. Vaccines are believed to be effective before and after exposure, and an antiviral approved for a closely related disease, smallpox, can be used to treat monkeypox. Local officials, including Breed, say the vaccine supply is insufficient to provide vaccines to everyone at high risk of exposure. “Our declaration of a state of emergency is to sound the alarm and make it very clear that we desperately need more vaccine and more treatment,” Breed said on Thursday. Fight to vaccinate gay and bisexual men against monkeypox reveals disparities Monkey pox is spread primarily through close contact, and experts say they believe skin-to-skin contact during sexual activity is a major source of transmission in the current outbreak. But they warn that the virus spreads through other forms of touch and can circulate outside the gay community, noting a handful of cases in women and children. WHO officials have advised men who have sex with men to temporarily reduce their number of sexual partners in an effort to reduce transmission. The New York and San Francisco announcements did not include containment measures or restrictions intended to limit the spread. “We are not implementing behavioral restrictions or other measures like we did with COVID. This is all about resources and the ability to move quickly to deploy those resources,” Breed said in a post explaining the emergency. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday that officials have not made a decision about declaring a national emergency, noting that the virus has not yet become as dire a threat as the coronavirus. Becerra is touting vaccines and treatments that the Biden administration has continued to send to local health departments and providers, including about 800,000 doses that federal officials cleared for distribution this week. “We will weigh any decision to declare a public health emergency based on the response we see across the country,” Becerra told reporters at a briefing. “The bottom line is: We have to stay ahead of this and be able to end this outbreak.” Federal officials have spent the week privately grappling with whether to declare a state of emergency, with some senior health officials arguing it would increase public awareness of the outbreak and allow for a more robust response, including forcing hospitals to report more data for monkeypox patients. But other health and White House officials have raised questions about the U.S. emergency declaration, saying it would be mostly symbolic and create pressure to declare additional states of emergency for other issues, such as abortion, which they sought the supporters. HHS also continued to renew a 2½-year-old public health emergency declaration for the coronavirus, amid some conservative demands to end it. Dan Diamond contributed to this report.
