The vast majority of identified cases of the virus have been among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, in particular those who have reported recent sexual encounters with new or multiple partners, according to the World Health Organization. The CDC further reports that the outbreak has now seen more than 3,500 confirmed monkeypox cases in 44 countries.
“What really scares me right now is we are not talking about the inadequate job we are doing on testing,” James Krellenstein, an influential HIV activist and the co-founder of advocacy group PrEP4All, told NBC News, even as the Biden administration pledged this week to ramp up the nation’s monkeypox testing capacity. Yet many experts presume this is a substantial undercount, due to what they characterize as woefully insufficient screening and awareness about the virus. This figure has been increasing at a forebodingly swift pace since the global outbreak began in early May.
As of Thursday, 173 diagnoses of monkeypox in 24 states plus Washington, D.C., had been reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
