U.S. plan to stretch monkeypox vaccine supply runs into problems
The Biden administration’s plan to stretch supplies of monkeypox vaccine by giving people fractional doses of the product is running into problems, with some local health officials saying they are unable to extract the targeted number of doses from vials.
The administration announced on Aug. 9 that it would authorize use of one-fifth doses of Bavarian Nordic’s monkeypox vaccine, Jynneos, meaning each vial of vaccine should generate five vaccinations. In practice, however, drawing that many doses is proving to be impossible in a number of hands.
“Our team is getting three to four [doses] currently,” said Jeffrey Duchin, chief of communicable disease epidemiology and immunization for Seattle and King County Health Department, who added that that rate is “problematic because the actual number of doses we are getting is lower than the official allocation which assumes five doses per vial.”
Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, said her group is hearing similar dose withdrawal rates from other jurisdictions that have started to use the fractional dosing approach.
Demetre Daskalakis, deputy coordinator for the monkeypox response for the White House, acknowledged that the administration is hearing that vaccination clinics are not uniformly getting five doses out of every vial.
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