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World, a third of the cases, confirmed cases in the united states. just think about that. we're less than 4% of the world's population and we have about a third of the confirmed cases. now, there may be other places that aren't testing as much, but that is still a significant disparity overall. when you look at the plan that john just laid out, these vaccine doses, 1.8 million doses, and then also making sure that you have plenty of the antiviral t-pox available, some 50,000 doses, that's important. one thing about the vaccine and john mentioned this, the technique that it will be required to ...

Is really, really dramatic and must be dealt with immediately. >> and then, joe, add to it the fact that getting a test is not an easy thing. a vaccine, it seems like, you know, there are less vaccines than, i don't know. it just seems like, what needs to be done now? >> yeah, that's a great question. you know, we are behind. and we are behind at first because we didn't test early. we didn't scale testing in this epidemic until mid-july. that has improved somewhat. we see people who need tests are getting them now. but, you know, the failure on the vaccine side and the ongoing failure on the t...

Patients have actually been treated with the medication. what is the level of awareness of t-pox? >> i think it's minimal. this is a disease that disperses in the gay community. >> reporter: in many ways, the story of tpoxx is a remarkable one. years ago, out of a concern that smallpox could one day be weaponized, the federal government stockpiled more than 1.7 million doses. but even in the middle of this new outbreak, getting those doses to those in need has been a real challenge. >> you're talking about a five to six-day timeline to get that medication to you at a local doctor's office. and...

Auto inoculate his eye. >> reporter: turns out about 25% of people infected with monkeypox do develop lesions around their eyes, and if the infection spreads to their cornea, it can cause blindness. >> that was what pushed me to treat him. >> reporter: that's right. there is a treatment for monkeypox. it's an antiviral known as t-pox. it's been approved since 2018 in the united states to treat smallpox. that's a virus in the same family as monkeypox. and recent studies have now shone effectiveness against monkeypox as well. >> reporter: what are eyou seeig in terms of response to this medicati...

How effective is it, and how broad a danger do you see monkeypox in this country right now? >> well, i mean, with regard to the second question, it is hard to know because we -- like we've heard with covid for the past couple of years, we still probably don't have enough testing here. when you cite these numbers just under 5,000, those are confirmed cases. there's a lot of people who still probably have not been tested. so this is sort of the nature of trying to keep track of these outbreaks in terms of the overall numbers. a lot of people don't realize that this antiviral t-pox exists, and fr...