Topline
The federal government has shipped more than 602,000 doses of Jynneos monkeypox vaccines — the only vaccine specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration to protect against monkeypox — to states and cities nationwide since May, with more than 100,000 delivered to some of the hardest hitting places, after the White House declared the virus a public health emergency last week to deal with vaccine shortages as cases rise.
A healthcare worker prepares to administer a monkeypox vaccine.
Highlights
New York City: As of August 4, New York City, the epicenter of the monkeypox outbreak in the United States, had received the largest shipment of monkeypox vaccines of any jurisdiction, with 124,644 doses delivered, while the New York State received 46,026 additional doses, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
California: HHS has shipped 178,251 vaccines to the state of California, which has the second highest number of monkeypox cases, including 71,102 doses to the city of Los Angeles.
Florida and Illinois– with the third and fifth highest number of infections – received 109,284 and 72,381 doses respectively.
The federal government is distributing 1.1 million vaccines, administration officials announced last week.
But several major cities said they were still running out of supplies, and a federal official coordinating the US response to monkeypox told the Washington Post recently, the United States may soon face a “vaccine cliff”.
Large number
6.9 million. That’s the number of doses of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine that HHS says the United States will have by mid-2023, but many of those doses aren’t expected to arrive until next year.
Peg News
The White House declared monkeypox a public health emergency last week to make it easier to access state outbreak data, free up more funds and deploy more healthcare workers to fight the virus. As of Friday, the United States had 7,510 confirmed cases of monkeypox and orthopoxvirus — the class of virus to which monkeypox belongs — in all states except Montana and Wyoming, according to the Centers for Disease Control. According to the CDC, some 27,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 81 countries around the world that had not reported outbreaks until Tuesday. The vast majority of cases have been identified among men who have sex with men.
Surprising fact
The United States only has enough two-dose Jynneos treatment regimens to vaccinate about a third of the roughly 1.6 million gay and bisexual men most at risk of contracting the virus, according to the Job.
Key Context
The United States depends on a small Danish biotech company, Bavarian Nordic, for the two-dose vaccine Jynneos, the only FDA-approved vaccine for monkeypox. The United States has a larger supply – 100 million doses – of ACAM2000, an FDA-approved vaccine for smallpox, which has also been shown to protect against monkeypox, but cannot be given to people with certain health conditions, including a weakened immune system and certain skin conditions such as eczema. HHS began shipping doses of Jynneos from the National Strategic Stockpile in May, but cities and states across the country quickly sounded the alarm about a slow rollout and severely limited vaccine supply.
To monitor
Changes in vaccine administration and more shipments. FDA officials said last week that they were considering adapting the way the vaccine is administered to allow healthcare workers to extract five doses from a single-dose vial of Jynneos. Biden administration officials have also said the United States will receive an additional 150,000 doses from the strategic national stockpile in September, although no further shipments are expected to arrive after that until October. Health officials in New York, San Francisco, Canada and the UK have decided to delay the second Jynneos vaccine injection to focus on delivering as many first doses as possible to high-risk groups. , against the advice of federal health officials, who have argued that a two-dose regimen is the best way to protect against the virus. Several cities and states in the United States, including New York City and State, California, San Francisco and Illinois, have also declared monkeypox a public health emergency, a decision they hope will help. streamline government responses and improve access to vaccines.
Further reading
White House declares public health emergency for monkeypox amid vaccination struggles (Forbes)
Single-dose monkeypox vaccine strategy could help expand scarce supplies as U.S. outbreak grows (Forbes)
‘Not enough vaccines’: US faces monkeypox ‘vaccine cliff’ (Washington Post)
Gap between monkeypox vaccine demand and dire supply in hotspot cities (Axios)