Long lines formed outside clinics from New York to San Francisco this weekend as the nation’s vaccine supply struggled to keep up with the monkeypox outbreak. Federal health officials are increasing the number of doses available as they expect the number of monkeypox cases will continue to increase through August.
Another 131,000 monkeypox vaccine doses were made available to states. Health officials ordered nearly 7 million doses but most of those are not expected to arrive for months.
On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said, “The window for getting control of this and containing it probably has closed, and if it hasn’t closed, it’s certainly starting to close.”
New York resident John Farrey became eligible for a vaccine last month after coming into close contact with someone who had monkeypox.
He told CBS News’ Tanya Rivero that actually getting a shot was difficult.
“I was told to call, you know, 311 in New York and discuss it with public health, I kept hitting dead ends. And when I finally did get access to the vaccine, it was unfortunately just too late for me,” said Farrey.
It wasn’t long before Farrey got symptoms of monkeypox, including blister-like rashes over his face, chest and hands.
Monkeypox is mainly spread through skin-on-skin contact including sex, kissing and massages. Anyone can get the disease, and symptoms include fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. Many who have been infected have developed painful lesions on their body. But no one has died from the disease in the U.S.
To understand the full scope of the outbreak, health experts said that testing needs to be ramped up and expanded beyond gay and bisexual men among whom the virus has so far been primarily spreading.
“It’s a fact that there’s cases outside that community right now. We’re not picking them up because we’re not looking there. This has spread more broadly,” said Gottlieb.
As of Friday, at least 1,814 cases have been tallied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New York makes up the largest share of cases with 489 tallied by the agency in the state.
