as calls to strengthen the nation's monkey pox response grow louder and U.S cases Skyrocket from 1400 less than two weeks ago to nearly 3 000 today the World Health Organization has declared the virus a global Health Emergency Dr Jennifer mcquiston is leading the cdc's response how big is the CDC response to this virus right now we have over 300 people who are working on this response 24 7. rarely fatal the virus is marked by painful lesions and sores spread through close physical contact and while monkey pox is not new the rapid spread is what's causing it now to spread in a different way than it has before we're coming out of covid right it's been two years of people not traveling not attending parties not having fun and I think there's some amplification of this that's happened as a result of people going out living their lives and that spread she says goes beyond just physical contact from respiratory droplets so somebody has lesions inside their mouth or throat they could potentially shed virus to sharing things like clothing towels or blankets with someone with an open sore the vast majority of cases are spreading among men in the lgbtq community how important is it though that people outside of that Community also don't close their eyes to this virus that's really important as we know throughout history that infectious diseases don't stay in only one population so perhaps it's been magnified early on in this population but it could potentially spread over into other populations two of the latest cases in children a Cornerstone of the cdc's response more testing and making more vaccines available all while still managing covid there are only so many staff members at CDC so when we stood up the monkey pox response we had to pull people out of covid she says if you think you've been exposed isolate then call a doctor and get tested we'd like to see the curve not keep going up but flatten out and then eventually start to go down so that would be my hope in the next three to six months and that's realistic if people take precautions now yes Blaine Alexander NBC News Atlanta thanks for watching our YouTube channel follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the NBC News app