travelled internationally in the 21 days before symptom onset which suggests they picked up the virus outside the country, according to McQuiston. "Through intimate contact and skin-to-skin transmission, it's transmitting better than it has under other circumstances," Slifka said. However, the virus now appears to be spreading better between people, he said. Historically, the virus spread in small villages in Africa by jumping from rodents that carry the virus to humans with very little transmission between people, Slifka said. It's unclear why the virus is now spreading in countries outside West and Central Africa where virus is endemic. has far more tools and more knowledge to fight monkeypox than it had against Covid in 2020, there are still many unknowns about the current outbreak. Rachel Roper, a professor of microbiology and immunology at East Carolina University who has studied monkeypox. "We're very lucky that the outbreak right is the low virulence West African strain," said Dr. There's another monkeypox strain, Congo Basin, associated with a higher death rate of 3% to 10%, according to the WHO. Most people recover within two to four weeks without specific medical treatment, according to the CDC.
The West African strain of monkeypox that appears to be driving the current outbreak likely has a mortality rate somewhere around 1%, though data is sparse because the virus has previously spread mostly in remote parts Africa. Smallpox can have a fatality rate as high as 30%, according to the WHO. The FDA warns that it's very important for people vaccinated with ACAM2000 to take proper care of the vaccination site so they don't spread the virus to other people or other parts of the body. The patient can potentially spread the virus to other people, or to other parts of their body if they scratch the blister and then rub their eye for example, which can result in vision damage. ACAM2000 uses a mild virus strain in the same family as monkeypox and smallpox that can still replicate, which means there's a risk that the live virus in the vaccine can spread in the human body or to other people.ĪCAM2000 is administered with a two-pronged needle that is scratched into the upper arm and the virus then grows into a localized infection in the form of a blister. ACAM2000 can have serious side effects, and distributing the vaccine widely would require serious discussion, McQuiston said in a call with reporters last week. The CDC generally recommends Jynneos over ACAM2000 because it is considered safer. Less is known about Jynneos because the vaccine is newer but it produced reasonable antibody levels in humans and should protect against severe disease, Slifka said. However, patients need to receive the vaccines within 4 days of exposure to prevent disease onset.ĪCAM2000 has demonstrated high levels of protection against monkeypox in animal models and is expected to provide 85% protection against disease from the virus similar to earlier versions of smallpox vaccines, according to Mark Slifka, an immunologist at Oregon Health and Science University who has studied monkeypox. Jynneos and ACAM2000 can be administered before or after exposure to the virus. "We want to ensure that people with high risk exposures have rapid access to vaccines and if they become sick, can receive appropriate treatment," Panjabi said on a call with reporters Friday. The U.S. has also sent out 100 courses of the oral antiviral tecovirimat to the states, health officials said Friday. had released 500 doses of Jynneos and 200 doses of ACAM2000 as of Tuesday, according to the CDC. government also has a stockpile of more than 100 million doses of ACAM2000, made by Emergent BioSolutions, McQuiston told reporters last week.
Monkeypox is in the same virus family as smallpox though it is much milder. Global health authorities also have extensive experience successfully fighting smallpox, which the World Health Organization declared eradicated in 1980 after a successful global vaccination effort. Monkeypox, on the other hand, has been known to scientists since 1958 when the virus was first identified during outbreaks among monkeys kept for research purposes, and its transmission in humans has been studied since the 1970s. had no vaccines or antiviral treatments to fight the virus in 2020. Scientists knew little about Covid when it first emerged and the U.S. is vastly different from Covid-19, which blindsided the country two years ago.
However, CDC officials have sought to reassure the public that the arrival of monkeypox in the U.S. Raj Panjabi, who leads the White House pandemic preparedness office, told reporters on a call last week. "A monkeypox outbreak of this scale and scope across the world, it has not been seen before," Dr.