Local Health Departments Offering Monkeypox Vaccine on Limited Basis – Wheeling Intelligencer
A woman administers the monkeypox vaccine at a walk-in clinic at the North Jersey Community Research Initiative in Newark, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
WHEELING — Local health departments in the Northern Panhandle are offering the monkeypox vaccine to eligible residents.
The Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department announced limited access to the vaccine Thursday, in conjunction with health departments from Hancock to Tyler counties. Vaccines are available by appointment only and are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, due to limited supply of the vaccine.
Ohio County Health Administrator Howard Gamble said the vaccine is available to three groups at the moment: people who are positive for the disease and their close contacts, health care workers who interact with patients who may have the disease, and those in the demographic deemed most susceptible to it, which is listed by state guidelines as gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men, as well as transgender, non-binary or gender-nonconforming people who have multiple or anonymous sex partners in the last 14 days.
“Across the country, 98 or more percent of cases are linked to that demographic,” Gamble said.
Gamble said that West Virginia has around 2,000 doses of the vaccine statewide, which have been distributed to county health departments based on population.
“Since the vaccine’s been pushed out across the state of West Virginia, … West Virginia has gotten vaccines in, so each week they get a supply,” Gamble said.
“They were able to build up a volume of vaccine that allowed them to not just have vials to respond to the cases and their contacts, it was enough vials to say, ‘You can begin some efforts for future control.’
“Since late June up until this week, the state of West Virginia has received a specific number of vials, and it’s less than 2,000 vials in the state,” he continued. “Those vials have gone out to the counties, and we have them to begin vaccinating the negative population, in an effort to potentially control additional cases.”
Gamble said that vaccines are delivered on a weekly basis, and that the vaccine landscape is constantly changing.
“Things are going to change – that needs to be understood, just like COVID, at the beginning, we thought things would change,” Gamble said. “This will change too. Though we’re limited and taking appointments, it’s because we only have so much vaccine. Eventually, we’ll get more and we’ll open it up, so people need to wait, be cognitive of what they’re doing so we’re not making a risk of exposure.
“These are our beginning efforts to see what we can do to prevent cases in this area, and they’ll change. Change is coming.”
Monkeypox is a contagious disease caused by the same family of viruses (orthopoxvirus) that causes smallpox. Monkeypox symptoms are similar to smallpox, but milder and rarely fatal. An individual can get the virus when they come into contact with the sores, scabs, or body fluids of an infected person. Infections occur through close, intimate situations, such as cuddling, kissing and sexual contact and by touching contaminated materials, such as clothing, bedding and other linens used by an infected person.
JYNNEOS vaccine has an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food & Drug Administration to inoculate individuals against monkeypox. JYNNEOS is a two-dose vaccine; after the first dose, the second dose is given 28 days later. Full immunity is not achieved until two weeks after that, a full six weeks after the first dose.
Health departments may be reached at:
– Hancock County Health Department — 304-564-3343
– Brooke County Health Department — 304-737-3665
– Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department — 304-234-3682
– Marshall County Health Department — 304-845-7840
– Wetzel/Tyler Health Department — 304-337-2001