By Lauren Dunn and Benjamin Ryan -
NBC News
Given the increase in cases of the monkeypox virus in the United States, the Biden Administration will begin distributing the vaccine against this disease throughout the country, focusing on people at highest risk and in communities with the highest number of cases , White House officials announced Tuesday.
The US Department of Health and Human Services will ship 56,000 doses of the Jynneos vaccine immediately to areas with high transmission.
Another 240,000 doses will be distributed in the coming weeks, and even more during the summer and fall.
Authorities hope to have at least 1.6 million doses available by the end of the fall.
[Should we worry about monkeypox? The US registers a case and in Europe they prepare vaccines while the outbreak grows]
The states with the highest number of cases are California, New York, Illinois and Florida, as well as Washington DC, according to the latest count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“We are recommending that vaccines be provided to both people with known exposure to monkeypox who contact public health and those who have recently been exposed to monkeypox,” explained the director of the CDC Rochelle Walensky, Ph.D., at a briefing Tuesday.
The CDC is prioritizing initial access to the vaccine for people who have had close contact, including sexual contact, with someone who has been diagnosed with the virus.
The agency will also provide vaccines to men who have sex with men who report having had multiple recent sexual partners in a place or party where the virus is known to have spread, or who have had sexual relations with multiple partners in an area. of the country with a high spread.
The WHO assures that monkeypox should not be considered an international health emergency
June 26, 202200:23
The vast majority of confirmed cases of monkeypox, both in the United States and in the global outbreak as a whole, have occurred among men who have sex with men.
Although the number of cases continues to rise in the US, the White House's COVID-19 crisis coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha, seemed hopeful that the US could contain the outbreak, saying it was important to remain vigilant.
[Biden says monkeypox cases are something to “worry about”]
"Monkeypox is not new," Jha explained at the briefing.
“We as a global community have known about it for decades.
We know how it spreads.
We have tests that help identify infected people.
We have vaccines that are very effective against it,” he recalled.
The monkeypox outbreak in the United States was first detected in Massachusetts in May, after a person who had been traveling tested positive.
Since then, the virus has been spreading across the country, with more than 306 cases in 28 states, according to the CDC.
But due to limitations in testing for the virus, the United States is likely significantly underestimating the number of infections, experts say.
“We have already lost control of this outbreak,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
"We believe that there are many more cases, and we have to act to control it," he said.
[Experts Explain Reason for Increasing Monkeypox Outbreak]
The cities of New York and Washington DC were among the first to begin vaccinating risk groups against monkeypox, including men who have sex with men who report multiple partners or at least one anonymous partner in a within 14 days.
With only 1,000 doses from the CDC to distribute at one clinic, New York, which began administering the vaccines on June 23, quickly ran out of them.
The situation was similar in Washington, where health authorities announced Monday that they would also begin vaccinating risk groups.
The 300 available appointments were sold out in less than an hour after the launch of the online reservation system.
Monkeypox vaccines. Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Biden administration's vaccination strategy is welcome, but questions remain about how doses will reach "those most at risk equitably," NCSD's Harvey said in a statement after the briefing.
[Second case of monkeypox detected in the United States]
The two-dose Jynneos vaccine, approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not only prevents infection, but can also be used to stop an infection after a person is exposed.
Walensky said people should be vaccinated within two weeks of exposure, but the earlier the vaccine is given, the better it works.
Doses are given 28 days apart.
There is also an older FDA-approved smallpox vaccine that also protects against monkeypox, but it is not recommended because it cannot be given to people who are immunosuppressed or have HIV.
The virus is characterized by a rash that looks like pimples or blisters, along with symptoms such as fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, and chills.
Symptoms usually begin seven to 14 days after exposure, but can start earlier or up to 21 days later.
[USA. exceeds 60 monkeypox infections]
In the current outbreak, the monkeypox virus is spreading primarily through intimate contact, including sexual intercourse and prolonged face-to-face interactions, Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the Division of High Consequence Pathogens and CDC Pathology.
Can the monkeypox outbreak be stopped?
Epidemiologists who have studied monkeypox are concerned that the CDC numbers do not reflect the true extent of the outbreak and that the United States may be moving too slowly to prevent the number of cases from rising.
“I am concerned that, considering how difficult it continues to be for people to get tested, and how difficult it can be for doctors to recognize who is infected, that our official count of monkeypox cases is significantly undercounting the actual number. of infections,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the pandemic center and professor of epidemiology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
"We urgently need to increase access to testing, vaccines and therapeutic drugs," she added.
[10 cases of monkeypox have been identified in the United States. This is what is known about them]
Walensky said Tuesday that public health and commercial labs can process up to 10,000 tests a week and that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans even more.
One of the challenges is that there is not yet a rapid test similar to the one used to diagnose the coronavirus.
Even with the testing delays, epidemiologist Anne W. Rimoin, director of the UCLA Center for Immigrant and Global Health, said it's not too late to get the outbreak under control.
"We have the ability to control it using the necessary public health tools, including case identification, contact tracing and testing," Rimoin said in an email.
"We need a rapid increase in diagnostics that are widely available so that we can have a good understanding of where we really are in terms of the number of cases," she added.
There are at least 4,700 confirmed cases of monkeypox in 49 countries, according to Walensky.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that monkeypox did not yet constitute a global health emergency, but Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus clarified that there were serious concerns about the "scale and speed of the outbreak".
