Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of existing measures for preventing the monkeypox virus becoming endemic.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is working with the National Health Service and the public health agencies in each nation to prevent the onward transmission of the monkeypox virus. The public health response is kept under review to prevent the virus from becoming endemic.

Monkeypox is not a novel virus and the West African subtype which is currently present in the United Kingdom is less transmissible and largely contained within a single sub-population. We have sufficient testing capacity to meet demand and we are deploying vaccines and therapeutics which offer estimated high levels of protection against and treatment for monkeypox.