US monkeypox outbreak exceeds 10,000 cases
11 Aug 2022 05:05pm
The confirmed cases in the country still account for almost 30 per cent of the global count. - AFP Photo
The CDC's dashboard showed that 1,391 confirmed monkeypox cases were reported on Wednesday, the first time that CDC reported over 1,000 monkeypox infections in one day since the first was reported on May 17.
The confirmed cases in the country still account for almost 30 per cent of the global count -- 31,800 so far, even though the country's population is just under 5 per cent of the world population.
The Biden administration last Thursday declared monkeypox a public health emergency, more than a week after the World Health Organisation qualified the outbreak as a global emergency.
Critics say the US authorities had acted too slow and were not meeting the demand for vaccines as the number of cases continued to grow.
California State Senator Scott Wiener said the federal government could have kept up its stockpile of the Jynneos vaccine, a smallpox vaccine that's proven to be effective for monkeypox. - BERNAMA
