As the monkeypox outbreak grows in the United States, the demand for the vaccine is outpacing the nation’s supply, said Dr. Rochelle Valensky said at a news briefing on Friday.
“We don’t yet have all the vaccines we want at this very moment,” she said.
When the supply shortage will ease is unknown. The federal government made another 131,000 doses available to states and other jurisdictions on Friday. But the scope of the outbreak remains unclear, in part because clinical testing has been slow and limited.
About 1,500 cases have been identified in the United States, mainly in men who have sex with men, and that figure is likely to increase in the coming weeks, Dr. Valensky said. He said that globally more than 11,000 cases have been identified in 65 countries.
“Our window of opportunity to control it is rapidly closing,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist and monkeypox specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “There are more cases than we know.”
The Department of Health and Human Services on Friday ordered an additional 2.5 million doses of the vaccine, known as GenoS, but those doses are not scheduled until next year.
Officials said the 2.5 million doses already ordered should start arriving later this year.
“It’s like saying we have a water tanker coming next week when there’s a fire today,” said Greg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.
Public health experts have criticized the US response to the outbreak as slow and inefficient, beset by some of the same problems that plagued the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Initially, for example, monkeypox testing was extremely limited, and each diagnosis had to be confirmed by the CDC, causing delays that could allow the virus to spread undetected and unchecked.
“We are now in a situation where with a limited supply of the vaccine and still some problems with testing, it is going to be very difficult to get it under control,” Dr. Gonsalves said.
The CDC has worked closely with five commercial testing companies to expand the nation’s testing capacity, which is now 70,000 samples per week, up from 6,000 at the start of the outbreak.
What’s to know about the monkeypox virus?
What is monkeypox? Monkeypox is a virus found in parts of Central and West Africa. It is similar to smallpox, but less severe. It was discovered in 1958 after an outbreak in monkeys kept for research, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We have the ability to test what we need and make it easy to access,” Dr. Valensky said.
But health officials should conduct more active surveillance for the disease, experts said.
Officials should get out into the community and offer testing in places that serve men who have sex with men, as well as in homeless shelters, such as homeless shelters, in which the virus can spread, Dr. Gonsalves said.
Monkeypox testing usually involves ingesting one of the lesions that accompany the disease, which makes it difficult to expand the test to people who do not have symptoms, Dr. Valensky said. “You need to have a wound to do a test,” she said.
New tests are needed, Dr. Rimoin said, including those that can detect the virus in asymptomatic people, as is active surveillance in animal populations, which can become reservoirs for the virus.
He said the virus is unlikely to live in the networks and communities in which it is currently spreading, and that expanding testing is particularly important given the limited vaccine supply.
“The faster you can identify cases, the better you can isolate them and prevent further transmission,” Dr Rimoin said.
Jynneos, the only vaccine approved by the FDA specifically for monkeypox, is given in two doses spaced 28 days apart. It is made by Bavarian Nordic, a small Danish company, and its global supply is highly limited.
Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary of preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, said Friday that the United States has purchased nearly seven million doses in total, but has received only 372,000 of them. He said that 156,000 doses have been distributed nationally so far.
Experts say state health officials may request an alternative vaccine called ACAM 2000, which was developed to prevent smallpox and should also provide protection against monkeypox. But that vaccine is associated with serious side effects, and the federal government has provided it only “in relatively modest amounts to some states”, Ms O’Connell said.
The Food and Drug Administration recently finished an inspection of Bavarian Nordic’s manufacturing facility in Denmark and is deciding whether to approve the additional 780,000 doses made there.
“We are working diligently to complete our evaluation of the necessary information, anticipating the expected release of these doses before the end of July,” said Dr. Peter Marks, a top vaccine regulator at the FDA.
He added that the United States is not considering a change to a dosing strategy to augment existing supplies. “We are confident that we will have a supply of vaccines so that we can vaccinate at or near the appropriate 28-day intervals with a second dose,” he said.
Officials said states and jurisdictions showing high or increasing cases of monkeypox, and populations considered to be at high risk, would get priority in the allocation of new vaccine doses.
Ms O’Connell said: “We are working round the clock to increase supplies and make sure we are reaching those most at risk.”
(This story has not been edited by seemayo staff and is published from a rss feed)