(CNN) After weeks of growing frustration over limited supplies of smallpox vaccines, about 786,000 additional doses are being made available in the United States, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday.
The US Food and Drug Administration said Jynneos mono vaccine doses filled and finished at a manufacturing facility in Denmark meet the agency’s quality standards and has approved a supplement to the vaccine’s biological license. Doses previously manufactured at the facility have already been shipped to the United States, so the FDA action clarifies the way to distribute and administer doses.
“HHS is working to make these doses available to states and jurisdictions as soon as possible to meet their needs and will announce allocations tomorrow,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 1.5 million men who have sex with men are currently eligible to receive the monkeypox vaccine. But as of July 22, 310,385 doses of the vaccine had been delivered.
As chicken pox has spread — more than 3,500 cases have been confirmed in the United States so far — vaccine appointments across the country have been cut short and long lines have formed at clinics that offer the shots.
FDA and HHS officials said Wednesday that they have stepped up the inspection of a monkey vaccination facility in Denmark in response to the outbreak, and more vaccines are still to come. HHS expects approximately 1.9 million doses will be made available in 2022 and an additional 2.2 million doses will be made available in the first half of 2023.
Bavarian Nordic, the company that manufactures the Jynneos vaccine, said in a statement that EU regulators have also approved drug production and that the company is now allowed to deliver a drug product manufactured at its own site to the US and EU market.
Who’s eligible to be vaccinated
The two-dose Jynneos vaccine is available to people at high risk of chicken pox exposure: those identified as close contacts with a person diagnosed with monkeypox, those who have had sex with a partner diagnosed with monkeypox in the past 14 days . , and those who have had multiple sexual partners in the past 14 days in an area with monkey transmission, according to the CDC.
The vaccine helps protect against chicken pox when given before or soon after. On the same subject : Department of Health Announces New Details of Chicken Vaccination Strategy. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN’s New Day on Tuesday that the US needs to change its chicken pox vaccine strategy to reach more people at risk of infection, rather than responding to exposure. smallpox
“It’s very clear with the spread of this that there needs to be a balance now between the vaccines available to those who have clearly been exposed, as well as those who are at risk,” Fauci said.
“What you want to do is strike a balance between vaccinating those who have clearly had exposure, but going much further than that.”
Anyone can get sick from mumps, but the CDC says that more than 99% of mumps cases in the US have been among men who have sex with men. Mumps is not a sexually transmitted disease, but it can be transmitted by close physical skin-to-skin contact, or from things like sheets or towels that someone with chicken pox may have used.
Symptoms usually begin within three weeks of exposure to the cranberry virus and last two to four weeks. The virus usually triggers a rash with lesions that can be extremely painful.
Fauci said Tuesday that he doesn’t think the entire population needs to be vaccinated against monkeys, although “of course, you leave the door open to any possibility” if smallpox spreads more widely.
CNN’s Naomi Thomas, Brenda Goodman, Jen Christensen and John Bonifield contributed to this report.
