Yesterday I had the privilege of testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee, alongside colleagues from the CDC, FDA, and NIH regarding our work in response to the ongoing monkeypox outbreak.

ASPR continues to lead the procurement and distribution of medical countermeasures for monkeypox. I was pleased to describe the good work that the team here at ASPR is doing to stay ahead of the virus.

• When the first case of monkeypox in the U.S. was identified, ASPR's Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) had 2,400 vials of JYNNEOS in its on-hand inventory and immediately deployed vaccine in response to the first case.
• When there were only 35 known cases, ASPR had already ordered 372,000 vials of JYNNEOS from our reserves – more than was needed for the ring-vaccination strategy that was being employed at the time.
• ASPR has made over 1.1 million vials of JYNNEOS available to jurisdictions across the country – which is enough vaccine to cover nearly the entire at-risk population with two doses.
• We have purchased 5.5 million additional vials to arrive over the next several months, including 2.5 million vials that will be filled and finished in the U.S. as required by our contract with the manufacturer, Bavarian Nordic.
• We continue to make as much vaccine available to jurisdictions as quickly as possible, but we have reached the point where supply has met demand.

I also shared that we have made available the therapeutic TPOXX. Prior to the start of the outbreak, the SNS held more than 1.7 million courses of TPOXX. To date, over 37,000 courses have been distributed to jurisdictions nationwide. 

While we are pleased to make these medical countermeasures available for the current monkeypox outbreak – it's the right thing to do – we have not lost sight of the fact that both were developed and stockpiled for smallpox. Last week, I consulted with the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise – the interagency body responsible for advising HHS on medical countermeasures development and procurement – and they agreed with this approach. As we move forward, we will consider ways to preserve our smallpox response capability.

I also shared that we are also taking every opportunity to apply lessons learned from our COVID-19 response to the monkeypox response. For example, when establishing a digital ordering system for monkeypox countermeasures we used a platform that would allow states to order both vaccines and therapeutics – rather than using two separate, non-interoperable systems as we use for COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics ordering. This will go a long way toward modernizing and strengthening our public health infrastructure moving forward.

Our work is far from finished, but we have made good progress fighting the current monkeypox outbreak. To learn more about the work that ASPR and our colleagues at CDC, FDA, and NIH are doing in response to the monkeypox outbreak, please see our testimony from the recent Senate HELP Committee hearing, Stopping the Spread of Monkeypox: Examining the Federal Response.