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The Biden administration has started shipping monkeypox virus tests to commercial laboratories.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said it had shipped tests to five commercial laboratory companies.
The companies include Aegis Science, Labcorp, Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and Sonic Healthcare.
The department said the labs would "dramatically expand testing capacity nationwide," noting that health care providers would be able to use them by early July.
FILE PHOTO: Two samples of suspected cases of monkeypox go through a process of nucleic acid extraction as they get tested at a microbiology lab at La Paz Hospital in Madrid, Spain, June 1, 2022. (REUTERS/Susana Vera/File Photo)
WHO MEETING ON MONKEYPOX, POSSIBLE GLOBAL HEALTH EMERGENCY
Testing capacity through the five companies will be scaled up throughout the month, supporting officials' understanding of the scope of the monkeypox outbreak.
"All Americans should be concerned about monkeypox cases. Thankfully we have right now the tools to fight and treat cases in America," HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. "By dramatically expanding the number of testing locations throughout the country, we are making it possible for anyone who needs to be tested to do so."
The expansion builds on capacities already available within the public health Laboratory Response Network (LRN).
Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), during the CEO Summit of the Americas hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, California, US, on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"CDC has worked with the LRN to augment the number of public health laboratories that can perform the test to over 67 laboratories across 48 states and the number of weekly tests available within the LRN to over 8,000 tests per week," HHS said.
US MONKEYPOX: WHERE ARE CASES NOW?
According to CDC data, there are now 156 total confirmed monkeypox and orthopoxvirus in the U.S.
Although the majority of new monkeypox cases have been seen in gay or bisexual men, experts caution that anyone is at potential risk.
A section of skin tissue, harvested from a lesion on the skin of a monkey, that had been infected with monkeypox virus, is seen at 50X magnification on day four of rash development in 1968. (CDC/Handout via REUTERS.)
People normally become infected with the monkeypox virus through contact with the skin lesions or bodily fluids of infected animals or humans or through contact with materials contaminated with the virus.
Monkeypox, which is related to smallpox, has milder symptoms.
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Some of those symptoms include fever, chills, rash and aches, before lesions develop.