Biden appoints duo to coordinate U.S. monkeypox fight


(Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday tasked two senior federal government officials with coordinating the administration’s response to the outbreak of monkeypox in the United States, as more than 5,800 cases have been recorded in the country. country.

These appointments take place alongside the strengthening of the vaccination campaign against the disease, the current spread of which constitutes, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a global public health emergency.

On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in his state.

Joe Biden appointed Robert Fenton, regional administrator of the Fema (Federal Emergencies Agency) as White House coordinator for monkeypox and Demetre Daskalakis, director of the prevention division of HIV within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as Deputy Coordinator.

Robert Fenton had been one of the officials in charge of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in February 2021.

The duo will coordinate “strategy and operations to address the current monkeypox outbreak, including equitably increasing the availability of tests, vaccines and treatments,” the White House said.

Monkeypox has been endemic for decades in central and western Africa, but an unusual increase in cases has been seen since May in Europe and North America. , notably.

The first case of monkeypox in the United States was confirmed in Massachusetts on May 20. The first case in California, in a person who had traveled overseas, was confirmed five days later.

Usually transmitted to humans by contact with wild animals, the virus responsible for this zoonosis can also be transmitted by direct contact with skin lesions or mucous membranes of a sick person.

The disease is rarely fatal, but deaths outside Africa, in Brazil and Spain, have been reported recently.

(Report Shivani Tanna and Akriti Sharma in Bangalore and Alex Alper in Washington; French version Charlotte Lavin, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)



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