The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) announced last Saturday that it received 14,780 doses of the JYNNEOS monkeypox vaccine.
Officials stated DSHS would distribute the doses to local health departments and DSHS regional offices so that people who have documented or presumed exposure to the monkeypox virus can get vaccinated.
Dallas County will be receiving 5,120 doses from the shipment after its health department ran out of JYNNEOS earlier in the month, according to The Dallas Morning News.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) counted 223 confirmed cases in Texas as of Tuesday. As of Wednesday, July 27, Dallas County had the most confirmed monkeypox infections in the state — nearly half of them, with 101, plus another nine suspected cases.
The shipment received by DSHS constitutes all the doses made available to Texas from the Strategic National Stockpile. Federal officials communicated that additional doses would not be provided until late August or early September, according to The Dallas Morning News.
JYNNEOS can be effective in protecting people against monkeypox if it is properly administered before or even after recent exposure to the virus, according to the CDC. It is recommended that the vaccine be administered between four and 14 days after exposure. While JYNNEOS might not prevent or reverse infection, it can reduce the severity of symptoms.
In May, the CDC and DSHS, along with local and regional public health departments, implemented enhanced surveillance measures to quickly identify cases of monkeypox as a response to the international outbreak of the virus in non-endemic countries.
A map of the cases reported in the United States can be found on the CDC’s website.
DSHS and the CDC have noted that the virus is currently mainly circulating among men who have sex with men. However, as reported in The Dallas Express, monkeypox can be transmitted to anyone in a number of different ways, including sex, skin-to-skin contact, and breathing in an infected person’s respiratory droplets.