08/11/2022

Monkeypox Vaccine: FDA Recommends Giving Smaller Doses

This is a strategy for spreading the limited doses further

On August 9, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a new way of administering the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine. The move allows doctors to give patients smaller doses in order to get more shots out of each vial and protect more people quickly. It’s the latest step in the federal government’s response to the growing monkeypox outbreak, which it declared a public health emergency on August 4.

While the government has shipped nearly 620,000 doses of vaccines around the country so far, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates about 1.5 million people are at high risk and need to get immunized with two doses of the shot. The U.S. is expecting an additional 750,000 doses of Jynneos from the manufacturer Bavarian Nordic, but they won't arrive until September or later, said Robert Fenton, the White House monkeypox response coordinator, during an August 9 briefing.

To ensure that people at highest risk of infection are vaccinated in the meantime, the FDA is allowing doctors to get five doses out of the current one-dose vials of Jynneos by injecting the vaccine between the layers of skin (or intradermally) rather than under the skin (or subcutaneously). Being inserted into the skin layers allows the vaccine to activate immune cells that can produce a strong immune response, one that is similar to that generated by injecting the fully dose subcutaneously.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.