DC mayor estimates districts needs 100K monkeypox vaccine doses

The nation’s capital needs 100,000 monkeypox vaccine doses to respond to the new virus, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said on Sunday.

A “robust testing regime” is already in place, Bowser told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, but the city currently has just 8,000 vaccine doses.

“We need more doses for sure,” Bowser said, noting the city is using its COVID-19 response as a model for dealing with the new disease. 

Ramped-up testing efforts in D.C. will likely means a corresponding increase in reported cases, Bowser added.

D.C. Health reported Washington’s first monkeypox case in early June, and the CDC now reports 108 confirmed cases in the city, as of July 15.

Nationwide, the CDC has confirmed more than 1,800 U.S. cases, and a Reuters report found over 11,500 global cases.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday the U.S. had “failed to contain” the monkeypox outbreak, which he described as a pandemic.

“I think the window for getting control of this and containing it probably has closed,” Gottlieb said, adding that the current case counts are likely “just a fraction” of the actual total.

When Washington, D.C., first released a number of Jynneos monkeypox vaccines to at-risk populations in late June, it ran out of doses just a day later.

The White House has pledged to distribute nearly 300,000 monkeypox vaccines nationwide in the coming weeks, and a combined 1.6 million in the coming months.