In a New York Times opinion piece July 30, Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), forcefully warned that unless the Biden Administration moves fast to address the rapidly growing incidence of monkeypox, it will be looking at “the next public health failure.” His warning came as New York State, New York City and the city of San Francisco were declaring public health emergencies in response to the rising cases of monkeypox.
On July 30, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan warned that as many as 150,000 residents could be at risk of infection, calling the city the “epicenter” of the outbreak. Following New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s announcement July 28, the state health department warned that monkeypox is an “imminent threat to public health.” As of July 29, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had recorded 5,189 cases in the United States. Globally, according to CDC data, there were 22,141 cases as of the same date.
Gottlieb asserted that the U.S. response to monkeypox “has been plagued by the same shortcomings we had with COVID-19.” It failed to quickly launch mass testing, in the range of 5,000 tests a week, as cases mounted. From mid-May to the end of June, the U.S. had only tested about 2,000 samples. “If monkeypox gains a permanent foothold in the United States and becomes and endemic virus that joins our circulating repertoire of pathogens,” Gottlieb intoned, “it will be one of the worst public health failures in modern times, not only because of the pain and peril of the disease but also because it was so avoidable.”
