US plans to end Mpox emergency declaration in two months

With few new cases, the plan not to renew the ER after January 31 is a recognition that the disease previously known as monkeypox has been largely removed.< /p>

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said Friday it has no plans to extend its public health emergency declaration for the outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, past its timeline expiration at the end of January, a signal that the disease no longer poses a crisis-level threat in the United States.

Xavier Becerra, the health and human services secretary, cited low numbers of new virus cases as he announced the administration's plans.

"We will not let up on the accelerator - we will continue to monitor case trends closely and encourage all people at risk to get vaccinated for free,” Becerra said in a statement.

Although the disease has not been eradicated in the United States , Friday's announcement served as acknowledgment that the virus had been largely suppressed. The Department of Health and Human Services said the administration has been working toward "a lasting end to mpox transmission."

Since the nation's first case In this year's outbreak was identified in May, nearly 30,000 cases and 19 deaths have been reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the country is now seeing an average of less than 10 cases a day - a steep drop from some 450 daily cases at the height of the outbreak in early August.

Experts in public health attributed this trend to a number of factors, including higher vaccination rates, behavioral adjustments in people at high risk of contracting the disease and the relative difficulty of contracting the virus, which is transmitted by contact narrow. The disease has spread mainly among men who have sex with men.

On Friday, administration officials attributed the improved course of the outbreak in part to White House mpox response coordinator Robert Fenton, a longtime federal emergency response official, and his deputy, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, an infectious disease expert. Among other actions, their team conducted targeted outreach activities with at-risk communities, including at Pride events.

Mr. Becerra declared a public health emergency in August. At the time, the federal government was struggling to catch up with a growing epidemic caused in part by the administration's slow response to the first weeks of the virus's spread in the United States. The supply of vaccines and tests was initially limited, and federal scientists struggled to obtain data on mpox.

Rights activists gay critics of the administration had demanded an emergency declaration for weeks before the August announcement.

The declaration allowed the health department to mount a more aggressive and well-funded response. More importantly, public health experts said, it enabled data-sharing agreements between state health departments, health care providers and federal agencies, allowing the C.D.C. to better track cases and vaccination rates.

In addition, the declaration freed up federal emergency funds for the response and facilitated the delivery of vaccines, a said Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University who advised the administration on mpox.

Jen Kates, Chief Health Officer world and HIV. policy of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said the statement also brought much-needed awareness to the outbreak. "This ...