"I think at this point we’ve failed to contain this"

Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday he wouldn’t be surprised if there are thousands of monkeypox cases in the United States, warning that the window to get control of the virus may be closed.

“I think they’re going to be reluctant to use the word pandemic, because it implies that they’ve failed to contain this, and I think at this point we’ve failed to contain this,” Gottlieb told CBS “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan.

“We’re now at the cusp of this becoming an endemic virus, with this now become something that’s persistent that we need to continue to deal with,” he added.

Although cases have primarily been detected among men who has sex with men, Gottlieb says the virus has “spread more broadly in the community,” and the current reported trends are in part because testing has focused on sexual health clinics.