The Public Health Commission has approved the vaccination strategy against monkeypox.
Health and the autonomies have agreed that it is a priority to offer protection to close contacts that are high risk.
This group of people includes HIV carriers, health and laboratory personnel who have had contact with the patient or the samples.
In addition, those who have had some type of risk relationship with those confirmed infected in the previous four days will also be allocated, as the Directorate of Public Health of the Community of Madrid had requested on several occasions.
The recommendation was raised in the second stage of a working draft of the Vaccine Presentation to which EL MUNDO had access.
"Immunization will be offered to people at high risk of contacts: immunosuppressed patients, health professionals who have had a close contact, and laboratory personnel handling samples from suspected or confirmed monkeypox patients."
On the other hand, from Health it is pointed out that at the present time, and taking into account the limited availability of doses (200), post-exposure vaccination is prioritized for people with a high risk of severity or exposure.
"Pre-exposure vaccination is not recommended at this time, although it could be recommended later depending on the evolution of the outbreak and the availability of vaccines."
Health sources present at the commission meeting explain that it has not yet been decided how to make the distribution.
From the Directorate of Public Health of the Madrid region they confirm that they are going to formally request in writing that they "start the distribution of doses".
In other countries, such as the USA, Canada or the United Kingdom, vaccination has also been launched.
Specifically, in the British Isles, which have at least a thousand doses, immunization is offered to close contacts and health professionals, but with little success.
A study published in Eurosurveillance among the contacts considered high and medium risk, only 14% of the close ones and 69% of the health personnel had accepted the vaccination offer until May 24.
Spain concentrates 36% of the cases registered in Europe.
According to Health, already yesterday the 259 infected were reached, from 11 autonomies.
A total of 254 were men, three were women and in two of them this information is not recorded;
age ranges from 22 to 60 years, with a median age of 36 years.
Yesterday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published a new update on the monkeypox or monkeypox outbreak and confirmed that since the start of the alert, 704 cases have been known in 18 countries. of the European Union, reaching 1,176 including those of the rest of the world.
Conforms to The Trust Project criteria
Know more
monkey pox
Health