On Wednesday, the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) renewed the monkeypox public health emergency determination.
“As a result of the continued consequences of an outbreak of monkeypox cases across multiple states,” said Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services, in a statement.Before reiterating the determination, he had spoken with officials responsible for public health.
On August 4, the Biden administration became the first to declare monkeypox a public health emergency in this year.If it wasn’t renewed, it would have come to an end on Wednesday, November 2.
Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), previously stated that the declaration would increase “access to resources” and “enable personnel to be deployed to the outbreak” in certain regions.Additionally, the emergency will “further raise awareness” and encourage monkeypox testing.
Following the World Health Organization’s announcement that its emergency committee had also designated monkeypox as a global health emergency, the United States renewed the public health emergency.The decision was made at the committee’s meeting on October 20.
The CDC has recorded 38 deaths and 77,573 cases of monkeypox worldwide as of Wednesday.There have been 28,492 cases of monkeypox in the United States, resulting in 8 deaths.
