Another day, another horrible threat to our very existence. Monkeypox, the latest installment in the series of things that want to ruin our plans, seems to have evolved rapidly, worrying scientists.
So much so, that the U.S. has announced that it will begin increasing the deployment of a monkeypox vaccine to try to stop the spread and impact of the disease. Hundreds of thousands of doses of the existing vaccine will be shipped across the country in the coming months.
Those most at risk will first receive vaccines with much of the supply directed to areas with a high number of cases.
The United States currently has 306 cases of monkeypox, a viral infection commonly found in some parts of Africa that causes painful skin lesions. The World Health Organization has refused to label the public health emergency outbreak even though it has now spread to more than 50 countries where the disease is not normally found.
The monkeypox vaccine has been around for decades, but the Danish biotechnology company, Bavarian Nordic, makes it the only one approved worldwide. Their vaccine, known as Jynneos, is the one the US is currently using. Both the United States and the United Kingdom are “ring-vaccinating” close contacts of confirmed cases of monkeypox in an effort to stop the spread of the disease.
Authorities are concerned about the disease, as a new study in Nature Medicine reports that the strain of the virus that is currently on the rise is a mutation in a strain that caused an outbreak in Nigeria in 2018-2019. This new strain appears to have “many more mutations than would be expected,” including several that increase its transmissibility.
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In Australia, there are only ten confirmed cases of the disease so far: 6 in New South Wales and four in Victoria. Vaccines are being offered in the country to those who may have been close contacts and the authorities are monitoring the situation closely, although at this stage it does not seem too alarming.
Raina MacIntyre, professor of global biosafety at UNSW, has written that “mass vaccination is not recommended” in Australia for monkeypox, but that targeted vaccines should be given to high-risk populations such as health workers .
He also states that while there are no specific treatments for the disease, we do have drugs developed to treat now eradicated smallpox that are effective against monkeypox.
Additional monitoring and research on how the virus is spreading seems to be the next steps being taken, with the priority being to curb the spread. For now, though, you don’t have to rush to get vaccinated unless you think you’ve been exposed to someone with the virus.
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