Update (August 23): Yesterday, health authorities in the UK announced that the country will begin offering smaller, intradermally injected doses of the monkeypox vaccine to stretch supplies. The decision follows a similar proclamation from the European Medicines Agency. However, healthcare professionals in the US are finding that vials contain a smaller volume of vaccine than expected, leading to less of a benefit from applying this method, STAT reports.
As monkeypox continues to spread across the US, the supply of the vaccine used to prevent it remains tight. On August 9, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized a new strategy that could allow the country to vaccinate five times as many people using its limited stock. This strategy, known as an intradermal vaccination, only uses one-fifth of the traditional vaccine dose and is injected just underneath the skin’s surface instead of into the underlying fat.
The inner layer of ...
