Infectious disease experts and American public health advocates have warned that the response of President Joe Biden’s administration to the monkeypox outbreak has been too slow and that the United States risks losing control of the disease.

And experts explained in statements published by the American newspaper The Hill that “the US administration’s response to monkeypox is mimicking the worst stages of the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic, with very limited testing and a slowdown in growth.” the introduction of vaccines, which leads to the spread of the virus without detection. control him.”

For his part, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said during the briefing: “We, as a global community, have known this for decades. We know how it spreads. very effective vaccines against it.”

“The United States is lucky because monkeypox is not as contagious as Covid-19 and is not fatal,” said John Andros, assistant professor of global health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. He added: “I think we will continue to repeat these mistakes because this is our track record, we have experienced more than five or six waves of Covid-19 and every time we seem to be a little surprised.”

The administration is stepping up its response by expanding testing capacity and increasing access to vaccines, although critics say the effort came too late.