Why It ’ s Way Harder to Get Tested for Monkeypox Than It Should Be

In June, when it became clear that the U.S. monkeypox outbreak that had begun a month before was not going to just peter out, federal officials met the outbreak with confidence. The pool of at-risk people seemed to be relatively shallow—mostly limited to men who had sex with other men, anyone who had other close contact with a confirmed or suspected case, and anyone who had recently traveled to a country where monkeypox was known to be circulating. A testing infrastructure for monkeypox was already in place through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its Laboratory Response Network (LRN), a collection of 67 federal labs in 48 states, capable of processing more than 8,000 monkeypox tests per week. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] That might have sounded like a lot at the time. Now, just a month later, the outlook looks a lot less optimistic—and that’s largely because too many obstacles still stand in the way of getting people tested and therefore treated. The testing failures of monkeypox are similar to those that inhibited a robust early response to COVID-19 in the U.S., experts say. As of July 21, 2,593 cases of monkeypox have been diagnosed in 44 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, according to the CDC. The actual numbers are probably far larger. “Most likely, we are just seeing the tip of the [monkeypox] iceberg,” says Michael Mina, chief science officer at eMed, a home testing and treatmen...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Disease healthscienceclimate Source Type: news