US to expand supply of monkeypox vaccines

The approach, which would require urgent re-authorisation, would be to inject a fifth of the current dose into the skin instead of a full dose in the underlying fat.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has decided to expand its limited monkeypox vaccine supply by authorizing a different injection method that uses a fifth more per injection, according to people familiar with the discussions.

For the Food and Drug Administration to allow so-called intradermal injection, which would involve injecting a fifth of the current dose in the skin instead of a full dose in the underlying fat, the Department of Health and Human Services will have to issue a new emergency declaration allowing regulators to invoke the use powers FDA emergency. That statement is expected as early as Tuesday afternoon.

The move would help alleviate a vaccine shortage that has turned into a growing political and public health issue for the world. 'administration.< /p>

The administration faced a barrage of criticism that it was too slow to ship the ready-to-use vaccine to the United States from the Denmark, where it was manufactured, and too slow to order bulk vaccine stocks to be turned into vials after the disease emerged here in mid-May.

In less than three months, more than 8,900 cases of monkeypox have been reported. The virus spreads from person to person mainly through close physical contact with infectious lesions.

Even though it has invested more than a billion dollars in the development of the two-dose vaccine known as Jynneos that works against both monkeypox and smallpox, the government only has 1.1 million vaccines on hand. It takes about three times as many doses to cover the 1.6 to 1.7 million Americans who the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say are at high risk of contracting monkeypox.

The vaccine is currently given in two 0.5 milliliter doses 28 days apart, with immune protection peaking 14 days after the second dose, according to the C.D.C.

Shooting is recommended by the C.D.C. for people who have been exposed to monkeypox and those who may be susceptible to catching it. People in the latter category include people identified as a contact of someone with monkeypox, those who know a sex partner in the past 14 days diagnosed with the disease, and those who have had "multiple" sex partners in that time. period in an area with "known monkeypox."

Federal health officials said last week that so far they had distributed about 600,000 doses of vaccine to state and local jurisdictions.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services also issued a broader public emergency declaration that allowed the federal government to more easily allocate money and other resources to fight the virus.