Those doses have yet to arrive in the US, as monkeypox cases continue to climb in the country. (By this point, there were fewer than 50 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the US, according to HHS.) White House selects FEMA and CDC officials to coordinate monkeypox responseīut the first time the ASPR ordered government-owned bulk supply of the vaccines be bottled and sent to the US – half a million doses in total – wasn’t until June 10, according to the agency. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 14, 2021. In subsequent days, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), an office within the HHS, ordered 72,000 of doses of Jynneos vaccines – which were already bottled and ready to be distributed – be sent from Denmark to the US. When the first confirmed case of monkeypox emerged in the US on May 18, the country had just 2,400 doses of the Jynneos vaccine in the Strategic National Stockpile. That initial delay, first reported by The New York Times, is expected to come under further scrutiny as monkeypox cases climb in the US and some public health experts warn that the country does not have enough vaccines in hand to contain the spread.
“We were thoughtful about using the bulk vaccine because once you remove it from bulk, you lose years of shelf life,” an HHS spokesperson told CNN. The US Department of Health and Human Services waited more than three weeks after the first confirmed case of monkeypox in the US to order bulk stocks of the monkeypox vaccine that the government owns and stores in Denmark be bottled and sent to the US for distribution – in part out of concern that once those vaccines were taken out of bulk storage, they would lose years of shelf life.