The US government will make more than one million doses of the monkeypox vaccine available to the country’s states in the coming days, after the US Food and Drug Administration The US (FDA, in English) yesterday approved an additional shipment of almost 800,000 doses.
The Secretary of Health of the United States, Xavier Becerra, defended this Thursday in a call with journalists that this implies that the Department “has done its homework” against the outbreak.
The vaccines will be made available to local health administrations and distributed based on the number of cases detected and the number of vulnerable people.
Becerra added that the authorities hope to have “several million more” doses against the disease available as of 2023.
To date, about 4,600 cases of the disease have been detected in the United States, which is endemic in some African countries but until recently had little presence in other parts of the world.
In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international health emergency for the outbreak on Saturday, after more than 16,000 cases have been detected in 75 countries, many of them European, and five deaths.
Despite the fact that some advocate that the US Department of Health make a similar statement, Becerra assured that his office will make decisions based on the data it receives on the prevalence of monkeypox, noting that, at the moment, the country does not Not a single death from the disease has been recorded.
“Monkeypox is not covid, although it is contagious, painful, and can be dangerous,” he explained.
Becerra asked US citizens to remain alert to detect the most common symptoms of the disease -mainly fever and skin rashes-, which is usually transmitted by contact.
To date, the vast majority of cases detected in the United States, as well as in other countries, occur in men who have had sex with men, although the disease can be transmitted to anyone.
The US health authorities have warned that it is likely that monkeypox infections will increase in the coming days, so it is important that people are alert and health centers know that they have sufficient reserves, both of vaccines and treatments, to keep the outbreak at bay.