US to provide Bavarian Nordic's vaccine Jynneos to some at risk for monkeypox, CDC says

In response to the threat of a spread of monkeypox, the United States will provide doses of the Jynneos vaccine to some at-risk adults, the CDC said on Monday.

The U.S. has a stockpile of more than 1,000 doses of Jynneos, the CDC says. The two-dose vaccine is produced by Denmark’s Bavarian Nordic, which revealed last week that it had secured a contract to supply the shot to an unnamed country in Europe.

While just one confirmed case of monkeypox has been uncovered in the U.S., according to the World Health Organization, 131 cases have turned up outside of Africa—where the virus is more commonplace. Most of the cases have emerged in Europe and primarily in the U.K., Spain and Portugal.

Jynneos, a smallpox vaccine, has been shown to be 85% effective against monkeypox.

The U.S. has a stockpile of more than 100 million doses of another smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, the CDC said. But the older shot, which was originally produced by Sanofi and now by Emergent BioSolutions, carries a higher risk of side effects, the CDC added.

“We are hoping to maximize vaccination distribution to those that we know would benefit from it,” said Captain Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC’s High Consequence Pathogens Pathology Division.

“Those are people who’ve had contact with known monkeypox patients, health care workers, very close personal contacts and those in particular who might be at high risk for severe disease.”

McQuiston added that the U.S. expects to quickly “ramp up” its supply of Jynneos as the CDC expects more cases to emerge.

In another bit of monkeypox news, Moderna said in a tweet on Tuesday that it is "investigating potential monkeypox vaccines at a preclinical level."