Dr. Sarah Bass of the College of Public Health at Temple University says declaring a public health emergency will prep the nation, especially in producing more monkeypox vaccines.
The declaration by HHS comes as the Biden administration has faced criticism over monkeypox vaccine availability. Clinics in major cities such as New York and San Francisco say they haven't received enough of the two-shot vaccine to meet demand, and some have had to stop offering the second dose to ensure supply of first doses.
The White House said it has made more than 1.1 million doses available and has helped to boost domestic diagnostic capacity to 80,000 tests per week. Dr. Sarah Bass of the College of Public Health at Temple University says declaring a public health emergency will prep the nation, especially in producing more vaccines.
"Hopefully what this declaration will do is ramp up that vaccine manufacturing so that we have enough vaccines so they can take it prophylactically before they come into contact with someone," said Bass. But given the nature of how we know monkeypox spreads primarily through skin-to-skin contact, battling this virus will be much different than Covid-19."Covid was a very highly infectious disease that was spread through the air, and we didn't have vaccine for it and it was life-threatening," said Bass.