HHS is plugging $11 million into a Michigan facility tasked with filling vials with monkeypox vaccine Jynneos, the department said Aug. 29.
After months of supply issues, Bavarian Nordic, a Denmark-based pharmaceutical company, recently said it can't keep up with demand for Jynneos, which is the world's only approved monkeypox vaccine. In response, the HHS selected a "fill and finish" facility in Grand Rapids, Mich., to take shipments from Bavarian Nordic and put the vaccine product into 2.5 million vials.
The investment into the Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing plant "solidifies a domestic manufacturing capability that will bring us more vaccine sooner to end this outbreak," HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a news release.
The other strategy to offset the national shortage — a "dose-sparing" intradermal injection in which Jynneos is split into fifths and delivered between, rather than under, layers of skin — has garnered complaints from public health experts who said they have difficulty dividing the doses.