By JOSH BOAK and AAMER MAD­HANI-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

TOKYO (AP) — Pres­i­dent Joe Biden sought Mon­day to calm con­cerns about re­cent cas­es of mon­key­pox that have been iden­ti­fied in Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States, say­ing he did not see the need to in­sti­tute strict quar­an­tine mea­sures.

Speak­ing in Tokyo a day af­ter he said the virus was some­thing “to be con­cerned about,” Biden said, ”I just don’t think it ris­es to the lev­el of the kind of con­cern that ex­ist­ed with COVID-19.”

Mon­key­pox is rarely iden­ti­fied out­side of Africa. But as of Fri­day, there were 80 con­firmed cas­es world­wide, in­clud­ing at least two in the Unit­ed States, and an­oth­er 50 sus­pect­ed ones. On Sun­day, one pre­sump­tive case of mon­key­pox al­so was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed in Broward Coun­ty in South Flori­da, which state health of­fi­cials said ap­peared to be re­lat­ed to in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el.

Al­though the dis­ease be­longs to the same virus fam­i­ly as small­pox, its symp­toms are milder. Peo­ple usu­al­ly re­cov­er with­in two to four weeks with­out need­ing to be hos­pi­tal­ized, but the dis­ease oc­ca­sion­al­ly is dead­ly.

Biden said the small­pox vac­cine works for mon­key­pox. Asked whether the U.S. has enough stock­pile of that vac­cine to han­dle the mon­key­pox spread, Biden said, “I think we do have enough to deal with the like­li­hood of a prob­lem.”