“I think we missed that train at this point,” said Gary Kobinger, director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and a member of an expert committee that advises the World Health Organization’s Emergencies Program.
The view is equally grim from clinics that diagnose sexually transmitted infections, which have been on the frontlines for monkeypox detection given that the virus is primarily spreading among men who have sex with men in the United States, U.K., and a number of other countries.
“The STI field is preparing for the long haul here,” said David C. Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors, an organization that represents sexual health clinics. “We think, unfortunately, that monkeypox may become endemic among the MSM community.”…
Others bemoan the fact that the world allowed itself to get in this position in the first place. It’s been clear for the past few years that monkeypox transmission has changed — and not for the better — in Nigeria, one of the countries where the virus lives in rodents and small animals. There have been more cases, and a number of exported cases have landed in the U.K., the U.S., Israel, and Singapore. It was only a matter of time.
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