US monkeypox cases rise to 20 as vaccines ship

The number of U.S. cases of monkeypox rose to 20, six more than late last week, as the government began shipping drugs and vaccines to eight states that requested them.

All the U.S. cases of the disease, seen in 11 states, are recovering or have already recovered, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday in a briefing. The government has delivered 1,200 doses of vaccine and 100 courses of treatment, they said.

Monkeypox, a less-lethal relative of smallpox that’s normally found in Africa, has recently been spreading in some Western countries, largely among men who have sex with men, and is mainly transmitted through intimate contact when people are still symptomatic. More than 700 cases have been seen globally, said Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the CDC’s division of high-consequence pathogens and pathology.

Supplies available in the Strategic National Stockpile are sufficient to combat the current outbreak, the agency said. Vaccines available for use against monkeypox are Jynneos from Bavarian Nordic A/S and Emergent BioSolutions Inc.’s ACAM2000. Both are prioritized for use in high-risk contacts of patients.

Through contact-tracing efforts, officials have identified hundreds of people who may have been exposed to the virus in the US, but so far only 20 were determined to be high-risk.

The majority of U.S. cases have been linked to recent travel to Europe, and officials said it’s likely exposure occurred overseas. Still, officials reiterated that the risk to the general public remains low. Health authorities are working with populations at higher risk, such as the LGBTQ community, to ensure information is reaching those most affected by the current outbreak.

While most samples of the virus have been genetically similar to those found in Europe, two U.S. cases in the current outbreak have a notably different makeup, McQuiston said. One was found in a woman who had traveled to west Africa, and the other in a man who had traveled to the Middle East and Africa, she said.

“It’s not clear what all this means, but it’s likely that within the last couple of years, there have been at least two different instances where monkeypox virus spilled over to people in Nigeria,” from animals, McQuiston said. “And the virus likely began to spread through person-to-person close contact, possibly intimate or sexual contact.”