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The Biden administration is planning on sending out nearly 300,000 monkeypox vaccines due to the outbreak of the rare disease. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that it will be sending out 296,000 doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine for prevention of the disease for people who have been exposed. 56,000 of those doses will become available immediately and an additional 240,000 doses will become available in the coming weeks. Officials expect 750,000 more doses to become available over the summer, and an additional 500,000 doses throughout the fall.
The federal health agency only recommended vaccination for people who had been identified as being exposed through contact tracing. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be expanding its recommendation of who gets the monkeypox vaccine due to the difficulty identifying all contacts in the current outbreak. The CDC is now recommending the vaccine for those with confirmed and suspected exposures, including those who have had close physical contact with a person who was diagnosed, contact with a known sexual partner who was diagnosed, and men who have sex with men who were in an area with known monkeypox exposure.
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