The US government will buy more monkeypox vaccine as an international outbreak of the disease continues to grow, health officials said Friday.
As of Friday, the United States had identified 45 cases in 15 states and the District of Columbia.
There are more than 1,300 cases in 30 other countries outside of Africa where the virus is endemic.
Officials say the risk to the US population is low, but are taking steps to ensure people have the medical resources to deal with the problem.
A two-dose vaccine, Jynneos, is licensed for monkeypox in the United States.
The US government has 72,000 doses of Jynneos, and will receive 300,000 more doses from its manufacturer, Bavarian Nordic, in the coming weeks, said Dawn O’Connell, who oversees the government’s stockpile of vaccines and emergency treatments.
On Friday, the government announced that it had ordered a further 500,000 doses of Jynneos from Bavarian Nordic, to be delivered by the end of this year.
The company also owns other doses that are owned by the US government, he added.
“We have the vaccines and the treatments that we need to deal with the disease,” said O’Connell, of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Monkeypox is endemic in parts of Africa, where people become infected through the bites of rodents or small animals. It does not usually spread easily between people.
Last month, cases began to be reported in Europe and the United States, where many — but not all — of those who contracted the virus had traveled abroad.
Although most cases have occurred in men who have sex with other men, health authorities stress that anyone can get monkeypox.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that all of the US cases they had examined had been linked to very close contact.
Authorities alerted doctors to be on the lookout for monkeypox cases and to offer vaccinations to people in contact with those infected.
So far, more than 1,400 vaccine courses and more than 110 treatment courses have been shipped to affected state and local jurisdictions, officials said.
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