On the 7th, the White House expressed optimism about the decline of monkeypox infection and the expansion of vaccination in the United States. However, the new cases of monkeypox and the vaccination situation show increasingly obvious ethnic differences.
Dimitri zaskarakis, deputy coordinator of the national monkeypox epidemic response of the White House, said that more than 460000 doses of monkeypox vaccine have been distributed, and the distribution will be intensified in the next few weeks, and the vaccine supply is "not too problematic" now.
Zaskarakis said, "our goal is to control the monkeypox epidemic in the United States."
According to the associated press, ending the spread of monkeypox virus is in the distant future. Among the monkeypox outbreaks in many countries this year, the United States has the largest cumulative number of monkeypox cases. As of July 7, the cumulative number of infected cases in the country exceeded 21000, about 98% of which were men, of which 93% reported having male sex recently.
On the 22nd of last month, the new cases of monkeypox in the United States reached a peak of 870 in a single day. Since then, the monkeypox epidemic has slowed down, but the new infections show deepening ethnic differences.
According to the associated press, among the new cases of monkeypox infection in recent weeks, the proportion of white men has decreased, while the proportion of African American cases has increased. The latest known data shows that in the last week of August, the proportion of cases of African descent was nearly 38%. In the first few weeks of the monkeypox outbreak, African Americans accounted for less than a quarter of the cases. Hispanics now account for about a third of the cases. The proportion of cases of African Americans and Latinos is much higher than that of this group in the total population of the United States.
Amesh adarja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for health protection, said that this trend means that minority communities cannot effectively access public health information and monkeypox vaccines. He believes that the government's intervention measures need to be significantly adjusted.
The vaccination of monkeypox in the United States also shows similar racial differences. According to the data released by the Centers for disease prevention and control on August 26, about half of the monkeypox vaccine recipients are white, and about 10% are African Americans. Iwan labaud, director of global health education affairs of oxner health agency in the United States, told the associated press that this is similar to the racial difference in covid-19 vaccination in the United States, "this problem is still not solved".