Des Moines, Iowa — State health officials say they are actively monitoring the state’s monkeypox cases and are strategically deploying its limited vaccinations.
Federal officials allocated about 25 hundred doses of the monkeypox vaccine to Iowa, which reports just over a dozen confirmed cases statewide. Iowa Department of Human Services Director Kelly Garcia says the state is following federal guidelines to target the vaccine towards certain populations considered most at risk.
Garcia says the state is also reserving a small number of vaccine doses for -other- close contacts.
Iowa’s first case of monkeypox was reported in Polk County on July 11th and there have since been 12 more confirmed cases statewide. Federal health officials report about nine-thousand cases nationwide.
