For a few weeks this summer, the world worried that monkeypox might become the next global pandemic. At the peak in early August the US was recording 600 cases a day, and the health authorities’ fumbling response echoed the early days of Covid-19. Vaccines were slow to arrive and in short supply for most of the […]
Read MoreAdd to that: There’s little past experience with the vaccine, known as Jynneos in the US, being used against this disease. It was only approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2019, primarily for the prevention of smallpox in case that virus—eradicated from circulation by an earlier vaccine, but retained in two labs—was […]
Read MoreAdd to that: There’s little past experience with the vaccine, known as Jynneos in the US, being used against this disease. It was only approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2019, primarily for the prevention of smallpox in case that virus—eradicated from circulation by an earlier vaccine, but retained in two labs—was […]
Read MoreStill, that path is made messier by doing nothing for the countries in West and Central Africa, where monkeypox was first identified decades ago and has been spreading since 2017. Vaccines are not arriving there; Western nations, including the US, have snapped up the limited supply. Nigeria is believed to have been the source of […]
Read MoreIn a run-of-the-mill business park in Kvistgård, a Danish village about 25 miles north of Copenhagen encircled by forests, lies one of the most crucial solutions for controlling the global monkeypox outbreak. These are the manufacturing facilities of Bavarian Nordic, the biotech company that is the sole producer of the most advanced vaccine for monkeypox. […]
Read MoreTwo months into the international monkeypox epidemic, which so far has caused almost 6,000 infections in the United States and more than 18,000 cases worldwide, it may be old news to say that this disease has visited the US before. In 2003, the virus arrived via exotic pets imported from Ghana, sickening 72 people, including […]
Read MoreBut while a monkeypox test already existed, it required lab workers to do each step by hand, Morice says. Federal guidelines say testing should be done only by swabbing the lesions of a person suspected to have the virus. These lesions look like pimples or blisters and can appear on the face, hands, feet, around […]
Read MoreRing vaccination worked for smallpox because a person-to-person pattern of spread makes it possible to predict and interrupt chains of transmission. The process is straightforward: Find the people most at risk of infection, give them shots. But to take those actions today to curb monkeypox, you have to find cases, you have to identify their […]
Read MoreWhen monkeypox briefly found its way into the US in 2003, it infected prairie dogs. “We know that ground squirrels are highly susceptible to the virus and that there is a wide host range of species,” says Rimoin. “If monkeypox were able to become established in a wildlife reservoir outside of Africa, it would be […]
Read MoreWhile the current monkeypox outbreak will be the first time many have heard of the disease, the virus is thought to have been infecting people for centuries, possibly even millennia. A member of the same virus family as chickenpox and smallpox, monkeypox’s first documented cases were back in 1958, when there were two outbreaks in […]
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