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Indiana health officials on Thursday decided to offer smallpox vaccine to people exposed to monkeypox, in line with a recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Indiana State Department of Health also said the number of human monkeypox cases being investigated in the state has reached 33 -- four confirmed cases and 29 suspected cases.
Indiana is the first state to announce it will make the smallpox vaccine available to specific groups of people since the federal CDC made its recommendation Wednesday. As of late Thursday, health officials in Illinois and Wisconsin -- the two other states with significant numbers of human cases -- still were deliberating the issue.
Indiana will offer the vaccine to three groups of people: health-care workers and caregivers in contact with someone suspected of having monkeypox; people older than 1 who have been in contact with animals sick with monkeypox or small mammals from dealers implicated in the outbreak; and people who are investigating suspected human and animal cases of monkeypox.
By late Thursday, neither the state Health Department nor the state Board of Animal Health had received any requests for the vaccine for monkeypox purposes.
Indiana has a supply of smallpox vaccine from the national bio-terrorism response program.