Luis Benveniste, regional director of human development in Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank: “One of the clearest examples of public health system strengthening during the Covid-19 pandemic has been on molecular testing capacity in several Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, where broad laboratory networks sharing genomic surveillance data have been put in place. However, despite the investments and policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic, underlying weaknesses remain in areas that will be much needed to control monkeypox. For instance, active case finding, contact tracing and isolation was significantly enhanced during the pandemic, but more recently it has been deprioritized in many countries. This is vital for monkeypox response and likely to work well because most transmission occurs when patients have symptoms. Second, ring vaccination for primary or secondary contacts of the infected individual is key. Yet, adequate vaccines are..”