Dr. Gottlieb: 'Broaden Testing' to Get Monkeypox 'Back in the Box'

The Biden administration has the ability to get monkeypox "back in the box," but it will require an effort to "broaden testing" outside of just gay men, according to former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

"I think there's a potential to get this back in the box, but it's going to be very difficult at this point," Gottlieb told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "We're continuing to look for cases in the community of men who have sex with men. It's primarily spreading in that community, but there's no question that it's spread outside that community at this point.

"And I think we need to start looking for cases more broadly. We're looking for cases in that community, so we're finding them there, but we need to start looking for cases in the broader community."

Gottlieb, who is on the board at Pfizer, noted broadening testing — something the "CDC has been reluctant" to recommend — can help contain the virus.

"I think we need to broaden testing, and, so far, CDC has been reluctant to make that recommendation," Gottlieb said. "I think, if we're going to contain this and make sure that it doesn't spread more broadly in the population, we need to start testing more broadly.

"We have the capacity to do it. Right now, CDC has the capacity to conduct about 80,000 tests a week. They're doing about 8,000. So they can broaden this substantially by changing the case definition and recommending that more doctors be testing more patients, looking for this infection in the community."

There is still an "exceedingly low" risk for most Americans, Gottlieb added.

"I don't think this is something that people need to be generally worried about," he said. "I think that probably the incidence of this infection in the broader community is still very low. So your risk of coming into contact with monkeypox is exceedingly low, outside of certain social networks where you see a higher case rate.

"But if we want to contain this, if we want to prevent this from becoming an endemic virus, we need to be looking more widely for it. And the worst-case scenario is that we start testing more broadly and we don't find it. And that would be reassuring. But we should be doing that.

"We should also be testing wastewater for monkeypox. That's something that CDC can turn on instantly, starting to look for monkeypox in wastewater to see if it's spreading in communities and locations, geographic locations, where right now we don't think it's spreading, but it could be."

• What You Need to Know About the Monkeypox Health Emergency
• UK: 'Early Signs' That Monkeypox Outbreak May be Peaking