Monkeypox. It's on the rise and now officially considered a global health emergency.

The WHO's chief says the expanding monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries, and especially in Europe,

is an extraordinary situation that now qualifies for stronger action by health bodies.

Cases in the U.S. are now into thousands and only took a week for cases to double here in Los Angeles.

The viral disease has so far mostly affected men who have sex with men, but anyone can get it.

Children in the United States have been diagnosed with monkeypox.

Officials think it was through household transmission,

living in the same house with an infected person. So how worried should we be?

I'm Gustavo Ariano. You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the LA Times. It's Friday,

July 29, 2022. Today, what you should know about monkeypox

and how we might be failing to contain the next pandemic.

My LA Times colleague, Grace Tui has been covering the monkeypox outbreak.

She works on our fast break desk.

Grace, welcome the Times.

Thank you for having me.

So at this point with monkeypox, I feel like we're in January 2020.

We're hearing about a viral disease. and the media is all over it,

but the public doesn't seem to care much because it's not affecting them. And yet there's this lingering

paranoia of, well, what happens if it gets big? And meanwhile, the government is running around,

waving its hands and trying to yell at people. Hey, this may be a problem, but maybe not,

but we don't really know. So how worried should we really be at this point about Monkeypox?

Yeah, that's a really good question. It should definitely be on people's radar. This is something

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