Vaccinating Against Monkeypox

We’re taking another break from our regularly scheduled Covid programming to follow new developments in the monkeypox outbreak. As cases continue to climb, the U.S. is beginning a new vaccination campaign.

Previously, monkeypox immunizations were offered only to people with a known exposure, but now they will be offered to anyone who may have been exposed to the virus.

“In other words, don’t wait to seek out a vaccine if you think you may have been around someone who had it,” my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli told me.

Federal officials said that states would receive doses of a safer and newer monkeypox vaccine called Jynneos from the federal stockpile, based on a state’s number of cases and the proportion of its population at risk for severe disease.

The Health and Human Services Department will immediately make available 56,000 doses of the Jynneos vaccine and will provide an additional 240,000 doses in the coming weeks. Another 750,000 doses are expected to become available over the summer, for a total of 1.6 million doses by the end of this year.

State health authorities may also request supplies of ACAM2000, an older vaccine developed for smallpox that is believed to also protect against monkeypox. That vaccine, however, can have harsh side effects, some of which can be life-threatening for immuno-compromised people, pregnant women and older adults.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/29/briefing/monkeypox-vaccine-campaign.html