Senators press Biden administrator on monkeypox

by Sara Floyd Hello

On Wednesday senators on both sides of the aisle criticized the Biden administration’s monkeypox response, at a congressional hearing with the nation’s leading public health officials.

The strongest rebuke came from North Carolina’s Richard Burr, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions, reminiscent of the onset of COVID-19 to “do better” and implored officials who labelled the government’s handling of monkeypox a “catastrophic failure”.

In some cases still Burr listed off delays on testing, therapeutics and vaccines all of which were, and, challenging to access at the beginning of the monkeypox outbreak, during the many Pride parades nationwide for not issuing stronger behavioural guidance for a disease that’s largely infecting the gay and bisexual male community he criticized government health officials.

“It isn’t a question of money”, said Burr. You’ve been given astonishing amounts of money. It’s a question of leadership. It’s a question of focus. You need to do better as it’s a question of squashing the typical bureaucratic roadblocks, arrogance and ineptitude.”

The committee chair, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, also had criticism of the overall monkeypox response — with the news that access to vaccines though she tempered hers, testing and therapeutics has increased while case growth has decreased.

Still, she called the response “unacceptable.”

Sen. Rand Paul questions Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions hearing about it.

For their part, members of the administration’s monkeypox response said that they had worked quickly to focus on key measures like testing and vaccines.

Walensky on May 17, said that a case was reported in Massachusetts and was confirmed by CDC the following day. In their response CDC immediately began its work searching for additional cases, educating clinicians and the public about this disease and supporting our state and local health public health partners”.

She said the U.S. has always had more testing capacity than testing being done and to date is still doing 14-20% of its total testing capacity. The underlying issue, she said, has been getting health care providers up to speed on a disease that’s not common domestically so that they quickly prescribe tests.

The FDA commissioner, Califf, said that “There’s never been a shortage of tests, but there’s been a shortage of access to tests because of inefficiencies in the system”.

Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labour, and Pensions hearing to examine an update to the ongoing Federal response to COVID-19, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Burr pushed the officials on why vaccination rates aren’t higher, on vaccines — arguing that a lack of information on the new intradermal vaccination method, which is allowing the U.S. to increase its vaccine supply by up to fivefold, could be turning people off of the shots.

Walensky said, at events like Atlanta Black Pride the administration has been doing some large-scale pop-up clinics, Charlotte Pride, Boise Pride and Southern Decadence in New Orleans, and they had vaccinated around 7,200 people between the Atlanta and New Orleans events.

O’Connell, who oversees the vaccine logistics within the Department of Health and Human Services, said the U.S. would be getting an additional 5.5 million vials of monkeypox vaccine in the coming months — which could be used as some 27 million doses, using the new intradermal approach — on top of the 1.1 million vials that have already been made available.

“Responses cannot be static. For new information and evolving scientific understanding to evolve and calibrate to the current set of circumstances they must continue and regularly account. O’Connell said, defending the response “this has been true of the monkeypox response thus far and will be true as it continues”.

Walensky pointed out that there are holes because of data hurdles in the administration’s work.

Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, Dawn O’Connell, United States Department of Health and Human Services speaks during the COVID Federal Response Hearing on Capitol Hill, June 16, 2022.

He said that the CDC does not have nearly the amount of information they need to design a more efficient testing and vaccination strategy, he said.

The CDC doesn’t know which people who are testing positive for monkeypox have been vaccinated or not, she said.

Data is only reported for 27% of tests and 47% of cases while demographic data, such as race, ethnicity and gender, are reported in 91% of vaccinations.

Walensky said, “With state and local public health staff we have been working closely, tirelessly, who have been doing the same to extract data on this outbreak specifically”.

Source:- https://liveblogsus.com/senators-press-biden-administrator-on-monkeypox/