Arkansas Pharmacy Leads Monkeypox Vaccination Services

With over 40 years of commitment to the Little Rock, Arkansas community, Park West Pharmacy has quietly become a national leader in offering the Jynneos vaccine to its patients.

Founded with a philosophy of always 'take care of patients and the register will take care of itself,' Dr. Gwendolyn Paige Herzig is aggressively confronting the monkeypox outbreak with world-class vaccination services.

"We have already administered about 200 Jynneos vaccines and need more inventory from the state," Dr. Herzig told PrecisionVaccinations today.

According to new vaccine allocation information from the U.S. HHS Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). HHS is allocating the Jynneos vaccine to meet the needs of at-risk individuals and prioritize the hardest-hit jurisdictions, which have high case burden and transmission rates for monkeypox.

ASPR confirmed on August 8, 2022, that the state of Arkansas would soon receive about 1,760 Jynneos vaccines this week.

Since ASPR began distributing Jynneos in 2022, Arkansas has received 3,024 doses.

This is a small amount when compared with California (107,149) and Florida (65,960).

In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul indicated 171,030 Jynneos vaccines had been committed as of August 2, 2022.

Governor Hochul commented in a related press release, "This latest allocation from the federal government will help us reach and protect more people, and we will continue to work around the clock to secure more vaccines, expand testing capacity, responsibly educate the public, and protect those most at risk."

In West Little Rock, Dr. Herzig recently stated on Facebook, 'We have (Jynneos) vaccine in stock, guidelines have changed a little, please make sure you qualify before heading up here.'

The qualifications are as follows:

• A known contact to a confirmed monkeypox case identified by public health investigation, contact tracing, or risk exposure assessments.
• Has your sexual partner been diagnosed with monkeypox in the past 14 days or recently had multiple partners in a location with a known spread of the monkeypox virus.
• Or recently attended a large gathering involving intercourse of some kind in the past 14 days.

Herzig commented in a KATV article, "Everything we have learned in a post-COVID world about wearing gloves, or putting a mask on, or [limiting] close personal contact. Just taking appropriate safety measures," Herzig said.

"By no means should we actually stop living our lives."

"We just need to be safe about it, that's all."

As of August 8, 2022, the U.S. CDC had reported forty-eight states had confirmed 8,934 monkeypox/orthopoxvirus cases since May 2022.

Globally, over 80 countries have reported about 33,000 cases and 13 monkeypox virus-related fatalities.

Note: Pictured with Herzig is her brother, Jesse Pruitt, PharmD. In 2019, Pruitt graduated with a Doctor of Pharmacy from The College of Pharmacy of the University of Arkansas.

PrecisionVaccinations publishes fact-checked, research-based vaccine news that is curated for mobile readership.