Biden Administration Will Distribute 1.8 Million More Monkeypox Vaccine Doses

Topline

The Biden administration on Thursday announced a series of new steps to ramp up its response to the monkeypox outbreak as cases continue to climb, making 1.8 million more monkeypox vaccine doses available and offering more courses of an extremely limited antiviral treatment to states and local jurisdictions.

A vial of the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine sits on a table at a vaccination clinic.

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Key Facts

The new doses of the Jynneos vaccine—a two-dose regimen and the only shot specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration to protect against monkeypox—will be available for states to order next Monday, officials said Thursday, as a part of an accelerated Phase 4 of the White House’s National Vaccine Strategy.

The Department of Health and Human Services is launching a new pilot program to give some 50,000 vaccine doses to states and local health departments in areas hosting large LGBTQ events, targeting men who have sex with men, who have been disproportionately affected by the outbreak, officials said.

The White House is also providing training and other resources to jurisdictions on how to shift to a new type of vaccine administration strategy that involves injecting the vaccine intradermally to help stretch out supplies, White House monkeypox response coordinator Bob Fenton said.

Officials also plan to make 50,000 courses of Tpoxx—an antiviral for smallpox that can be used for monkeypox treatment in certain cases—available to jurisdictions with the highest number of cases starting next week.

Big Number

13,517. That’s how many cases of monkeypox and orthopoxvirus—the class of viruses that monkeypox belongs to—the U.S. has confirmed as of Wednesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency has confirmed monkeypox cases in every state except Wyoming. Some 98% of cases have been identified among men, while 35% of cases have been identified among White people, 33% among Hispanic people and 28% among Black people, according to some 6,000 cases for which the CDC has race and ethnicity data.

What To Watch For

Another delivery of 150,000 Jynneos doses will arrive in September, after the White House sped up a shipment that was scheduled for October. Jurisdictions that have used 90% of their current supply of vaccines and that are planning to administer the vaccine intradermally will be able to place orders next week from the additional 1.8 million doses the government just made available, Fenton said.

Key Background

Facing a shortage of vaccines as monkeypox cases continued to spike, the White House declared the virus a public health emergency on August 4. A week later, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization to allow for changes to how the vaccine is administered: Health care workers can now inject one-fifth of a one-dose vial of the Jynneos vaccine intradermally, or into the skin, effectively quintupling the amount of doses available. Health officials in Los Angeles and Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta, have made the switch to this new method, Fenton said Thursday. Evidence suggests this method of administration will produce the same immune response as the standard dosage and method, though it may require more training, which the CDC is providing, Director Rochelle Walensky said. The accelerated response to monkeypox comes after the White House faced a barrage of criticisms for a sluggish rollout of the monkeypox vaccine.

Tangent

The U.S. is reliant on a small Danish biotechnology company, Bavarian Nordic, for the Jynneos vaccine. The company said this week it is unsure it can meet demand for monkeypox vaccine orders from countries around the world and is exploring outsourcing its production, Bloomberg reported. The U.S. is working “very closely” with Bavarian Nordic to help the company increase its capacity and set a requirement that they work with a domestic U.S. manufacturer for a July order of 2.5 million monkeypox vaccine doses to be filled and finished, said Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS.