US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, said he would declare a national health emergency over the monkeypox outbreak in the US.
The outbreak has now recorded 6 600 confirmed cases in the US alone, which makes it the global hotspot for the virus, with Spain and Germany trailing just behind.
Worldwide, around 26 000 cases had been reported globally by last Thursday, August 4. This excludes cases in Central and West Africa, where the disease is endemic, but little testing is done.
Now, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Robert Califf, said at the same press conference that the US was considering shifting to intradermal injections of monkeypox vaccine, which could potentially stretch one dose of the approved MVA-BN vaccine to five. The vaccine is available in very limited quantities in the US.
“We are prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus,” said Becerra.
“Given the continued spread of the virus, we are at a critical infection point, dictating the need for continued solutions,” said Califf. He said the US was working closely with the manufacturer to accelerate the delivery of doses, but another solution could be to allow health care providers to use an existing single-dose vial to administer up to five separate doses, intradermally.
He said intradermal was a more “shallow” injection than the typical subcutaneous injection but added that evidence suggested that, if administered correctly, it could provide a powerful immune response for monkeypox. Intradermal administration is used only for a few vaccines. Although the procedure is relatively rare, it is widely used for hepatitis B vaccines in adults as well as the BCG tuberculosis vaccine in infants and children.
