The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced that the demand for monkeypox vaccine in the U.S. is now greater than the national supply.
The shortfall, which CDC Director Rochelle Walensky described as “frustrating,” comes as the U.S. has recorded 1,470 monkeypox cases, up from 45 cases on June 10. The U.S. cases are part of a global outbreak that has been widening since May and now includes more than 11,000 confirmed cases in 55 countries.“I want to acknowledge that at this time the demand for vaccines from jurisdictions is higher than our current available supply, and we know that this is frustrating,” said Walensky during a media briefing. “We anticipate an increase in cases in the coming weeks.”The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Strategic National Stockpile, said it had so far distributed about 156,000 doses of Jynneos, the two-dose FDA-approved monkeypox vaccine, and that another 131,000 doses are available.
The CDC is now working with a Danish firm to obtain more doses. The firm needs approval by the Food and Drug Administration before the order can go through.
The CDC vaccination campaign relies on the two-dose vaccine Jynneos, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2019 for adults ages 18 and older who are at high risk of monkeypox or smallpox infection.The U.S. is also working with the Danish manufacturer, Bavarian Nordic, to accept delivery of another 786,000 Jynneos doses currently stored in Denmark. HHS will preposition those doses in the U.S., and they will become available for distribution once the FDA signs off on the company’s facility. That approval is expected by the end of the month, according to Dawn O’Connell, the HHS official who leads the office that oversees the U.S. strategic national stockpile.HHS has ordered 2.5 million more doses of the Jynneos vaccine from Bavarian Nordic that will ship to the U.S. strategic national stockpile over the next year. The U.S. placed an order for an additional 2.5 million doses on Friday, which will ship to the national stockpile in 2023. In total, the U.S. should have nearly 7 million Jynneos doses by mid-2023, according to HHS.
Meanwhile, the numbers from New York City offer some intriguing information. Over 95% of the monkeypox bases are in men…and the other 5% are in “transgenders” or cases where the gender is not known. There are no confirmed cases in women.
Of the 336 cases in the city – the most of any singular locality in America – 321 are among men, with no confirmed cases among women. The remaining five percent of cases are split between transgender persons and cases where the gender is unknown.Transgender people were not included with the LGBQ community in the data.The virus has famously erupted among communities of gay and bisexual men across the world in recent months after first being detected in Europe, and this data confirms that the community is being hammered by the virus in New York as well.In total, over 11,000 cases have been detected in nations where the virus is not endemic as part of this outbreak – including 1,470 in the U.S.
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