A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official admitted that everyone who receives a monkeypox vaccine is essentially part of a “clinical trial” to gather information on whether the vaccine is effective.
The comments came as the agency’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, overruled a WHO advisory panel and declared monkeypox a global health emergency, the highest alert agency level. The last time the WHO issued such an emergency was in early 2020 when it made the same statement for COVID-19.
Tim Nguyen, head of the WHO’s infectious risk preparedness agency, said the effectiveness of the monkeypox vaccine is not known because it has not been used on a large scale before.
“I would like to emphasize something that is very important to the WHO. We have uncertainty about the effectiveness of these vaccines because they have not been used in this context or on this scale before,” Nguyen said on Saturday.
Nguyen went on to say that “when these vaccines are being delivered, they are being delivered in the context of clinical trial studies and prospectively collecting that data to increase our understanding of the effectiveness of these vaccines.” .
Cases
So far this year, there have been more than 16,000 cases of monkeypox in more than 75 countries and five deaths in Africa. The viral disease has spread mainly to gay men in the recent outbreak outside Africa, where it is endemic.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva, Switzerland, July 3, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via Reuters)
In declaring the emergency, Tedros noted that “at the moment it is an outbreak that is concentrated among” homosexuals and “especially those with multiple sexual partners”. Before 2022, the virus was mainly relegated to West and Central Africa, where the disease is endemic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration has approved two vaccines for monkeypox: ACAM2000, known as Imvamune or Imvanex, and JYNNEOS.
Many of the smallpox cases in the United States are in New York City, officials say. The city’s health agency said it obtained more JYNNEOS vaccines.
“The New York City Department of Health announced plans for its next allocation of the JYNNEOS vaccine,” the New York City Department of Health said in a statement on July 21. “Approximately 26,000 additional doses were delivered to New York City as part of Phase 2b from the federal and state governments, and will be distributed through clinics, mass vaccination sites and community-based referrals. The people can book appointments from July 24 to August 13.
Meanwhile, Europe is the epicenter of the monkeypox epidemic, officials have said. Tedros said on Saturday that “WHO’s assessment is that the risk of monkeypox is moderate globally and in all regions except the European region where we assess the risk as high”.
But last week, the CDC confirmed its first cases in children in two separate states. It is not clear how the children contracted the virus.
keep going
Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter for The Epoch Times based in New York.