People Without Monkeypox Vaccination 14 Times More Likely to Get Infected

Sept. 29, 2022 — People who didn’t get the monkeypox vaccine were 14 times more likely to get infected with the virus, data from the CDC says.

“There have been limited data on how well the Jynneos vaccine performs against monkeypox in real-world conditions,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. “These new data provide us with a level of optimism that the vaccine is working as intended.”

CNN reported that health officials are optimistic about the effectiveness of the two-dose Jynneos vaccine – and the possibility of eliminating the current outbreak in the country.

“We are cautiously optimistic about the study and think if we continue to get vaccines out to those that are at highest risk for disease, and if we continue to promote the behavioral changes that we know work, that the combination of those two will allow us to continue to see decreases in cases and hopefully eliminate the current monkeypox outbreak in the United States,” one senior health official told CNN.

The findings don’t account for changes in behavior or other factors, like the durability of the vaccine and how long protection might last.

“What it doesn’t let us do is fully disentangle pieces of this that may be behavioral change pieces that may be related to sexual networks or to who people are coming into contact with,” the official said. “We know that at the start of the monkeypox outbreak, a lot of gay and bisexual men changed their behaviors.”

More than 800,000 doses of monkeypox vaccine have been administered in the United States. The CDC says 1.7 million men who have sex with men are at highest risk.

CDC data show that the average of daily new cases has been coming down since mid-August.