The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Wednesday that it has begun shipping monkeypox tests to five commercial laboratory companies in a bid to boost access to testing for the disease.
Why it matters: A lack of testing has kept public health officials in the dark about the scope of the outbreak in the U.S.
A powerful earthquake that struck Afghanistan early Wednesday killed at least 1,000 people and injured more than 1,500 others, officials said, per the state-run Bakhtar News Agency.
Driving the news: The magnitude 5.9 quake struck some 27 miles from the city of Khōst in southeastern Afghanistan, per the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The casualties occurred in the provinces of Khōst and Paktika, near the Pakistan border, officials said.
