THURSDAY, July 28, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Amid public concerns about the government’s slow response to monkeypox, U.S. health regulators on Wednesday approved the distribution of 800,000 additional doses of the vaccine to stem the outbreak.

The additional plans of Jynnéos vaccine come from the Nordic Bavarian factory in Denmark, which the US Food and Drug Administration finished inspecting two weeks ago. The agency said the Twitter Wednesday that it had finalized the certification of the doses.

The doses don’t come too soon: July 23, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global public health emergency. With over 4,600 cases now reported in the United States, the Biden administration is weighing whether to do the same.

Although it was thought that the United States would have an advantage in the monkeypox outbreak over COVID-19, as it supposedly had 1 million doses of monkeypox vaccine in its national strategic stockpile, only 2,000 were in stock. available because the other doses have been delayed by navigation and regulatory measures, the Associated Press reported.

“There are not enough doses,” Dr. Perry Halkitis, of Rutgers University, told the PA. “I think with faster action on [the] part of the federal government, we may not be in the situation we are in now.

The distribution of these final doses to public health services was to be announced on Thursday.

Officials at one such department, the San Francisco Department of Health, were happy to hear the news.

“Without an adequate supply of vaccines, we would struggle to fulfill our fundamental duty to keep our communities safe,” the agency said in a statement. In this city, public health officials have received only 7,800 doses so far, the PA reported.

The FDA requires inspections at all vaccine manufacturing plants. The doses shipped earlier were from another facility in Denmark that already had FDA clearance.

Monkeypox is spreading globally, primarily through skin-to-skin contact and among men who have sex with men. It can also be spread by touching the sheets of an infected person. Symptoms include fever, body aches, chills, fatigue, and painful bumps on the skin.

Although the vaccine is supposed to be given in two doses, officials in major cities like Washington, DC, New York and San Francisco have said they plan to stop offering second vaccine appointments to stretch the doses and allow them to “vaccinate more people at risk and slow the spread of monkeypox in the community more quickly,” PA reported.

The United States plans to have an additional 5 million doses of the monkeypox vaccine available in the future, but most will arrive in 2023, the PA reported.

The World Health Organization has more on monkey pox.