Massachusetts Changes Monkeypox Vaccine Strategy Due to Limited Supply – NBC Boston

Monkeypox vaccine providers in Massachusetts have been alerted by state public health officials that the state is changing its vaccine strategy to focus on one dose while supply is limited.

In a message to Massachusetts health care providers, hospitals, community health centers and local boards of health, the state Department of Health announced that the state is moving to a first-dose prioritization strategy to ensure that the amount maximum number of people who are eligible for the monkeypox vaccine obtain some level of protection.

“This means that although the vaccine is approved as a two-dose series, we recommend that providers limit administration of the vaccine to a first dose, a strategy in line with a growing number of other jurisdictions across the country,” they said. state health officials.

What is monkeypox?

Monkeypox is a rare but potentially serious viral illness that usually begins with flu-like symptoms, swollen lymph nodes, and eventually a rash on the face and body, according to public health experts. These symptoms usually last between two and four weeks.

Two and a half years after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over COVID-19, another disease has received the same designation. This is monkeypox, which is now causing alert due to its rapid spread in at least 70 countries around the world. Andrea Cruz widens us.

What are the symptoms of monkeypox?

Signs of a monkeypox infection include flu-like symptoms and swollen lymph nodes, then a rash that may start on one part of the body and then spread, health officials say. The infection can last two to four weeks and can be mistaken for a sexually transmitted disease such as herpes or chickenpox.

“The rash can continue for a number of days, or even weeks, where flats or pustules develop,” said Dr. Erica Shenoy, medical director of the Region 1 Emerging Special Pathogens Treatment Center. “That’s where it’s at.” the virus, so direct contact with the fluid is really one of the main risk factors for transmission.”

Shenoy said the patient is “doing pretty well” and that the strain of the virus has been identified as a West African one, which is known to be less severe.

“At this point, there is a spectrum of disease, we are sure this is the West African clade,” Shenoy told reporters on Wednesday.

The Biden government is studying the possibility of declaring a public health emergency in the coming days. To see more from Telemundo, visit https://www.nbc.com/networks/telemundo

Is monkeypox contagious?

The monkeypox virus is related to the virus that causes smallpox, but health officials said transmission between people is difficult: It travels through bodily fluids, sores, items contaminated with fluids or sores, or face-to-face contact. dragged on.

“Person-to-person transmission has really happened by close contact, broadly speaking, and that’s close contact through respiratory droplets, or prolonged face-to-face contact, as well as direct contact with lesions, or direct contact with contaminated “. bedding or clothing contaminated with the lesions,” said Dr. Sarimer Sanchez of the Boston Public Health Commission.

Citing recent cases in the US and UK, the agency urged doctors to consider a diagnosis of monkeypox in people with an unexplained rash and recent travel to a place where monkeypox was detected, contact with someone who has or suspects they have the virus.

Monkeypox was identified in 1958 in monkeys being kept for research, according to the CDC. The first human case was discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, as officials pushed to eradicate smallpox.

CDC calls cases in the US “very rare,” highlighting two cases in 2021, in people who flew from Nigeria to Texas in July and Maryland in November, and a 2003 outbreak of 47 cases confirmed or suspected. cases in people in six Midwestern states.

In that outbreak, people in the US became infected through prairie dogs that had been exposed to monkeypox from small mammals imported from Ghana, the CDC said. The smallpox vaccine was part of the effort to contain that outbreak.

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