Effectiveness of Monkeypox Vaccine Is Questionable, Especially When the Virus Has Mutated
But they are the best we’ve got.
If there’s anything unusual about the current monkeypox outbreak — now over 1500 cases in more than 30 countries — it’s its diverse yet limited spread worldwide. This had never happened before, ever since monkeypox was discovered and known to be endemic in Africa only.
This phenomenon is most likely due to virus evolution, where the monkeypox virus has gained mutations that enable it to adapt to the human population more efficiently.
Most of us know that we have effective vaccines against monkeypox. But not many know that such vaccine effectiveness data came from the late 1900s. And now, barely anyone knows how effective those vaccines are against the 2022 monkeypox virus.
The questionable vaccine effectiveness
Some countries — notably, the U.K., the U.S., and Canada — have started vaccinating against monkeypox via a strategy called ring vaccination, where smallpox vaccines are offered to infected people and people exposed to monkeypox through…
