WASHINGTON — With monkeypox cases on the decline nationally, federal health officials expressed optimism on Thursday that the virus could be eliminated in the United States, though they cautioned that unless it was wiped out globally, Americans would remain at risk.
“Our goal is to eradicate; that’s what we’re working toward,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the deputy coordinator of the White House monkeypox response team, said during a visit to a monkeypox vaccination clinic in Washington. He added, “The prediction is, we’re going to get very close.”
Dr. Daskalakis was joined by President Biden’s health secretary, Xavier Becerra, and the response team’s coordinator, Robert J. Fenton Jr., who echoed his optimism. The visit to the clinic was intended to spotlight efforts by the District of Columbia to close the racial gap in vaccination against monkeypox — a major goal of the Biden administration.
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On Thursday, Dr. Daskalakis did not give a timeline for ending the outbreak in the United States, saying only that he was looking into his “midterm crystal ball.” But he said he expected that, over time, cases would drop to a trickle and infections would emerge only sporadically, enabling health officials to isolate and vaccinate the close contacts of those infected — and end the outbreak in the process.
That strategy, known as ring vaccination, was used in the global campaign to stamp out smallpox, which was declared eradicated in 1980.
But there is a major difference between monkeypox and smallpox: Smallpox occurs only in humans, while monkeypox also occurs in animals. The existence of an “animal reservoir” means there will always be the risk of spread to humans, said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota.
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