The Community of Madrid will demand this Tuesday in the Public Health Commission a change in the monkeypox vaccination protocol, which at this time only contemplates post-exposure vaccination of contacts of confirmed cases.
The autonomy aspires that, now that more doses of the vaccine have been received,
pre-exposure vaccination of groups at special risk
is also contemplated, even when they have not been exposed to the infection through known contact with a declared case.
Specifically, it would be the pre-exposure vaccination of people with risky sexual practices in groups with strangers and multiple partners in the last year.
Just a few days ago, countries like France have recommended this type of pre-exposure vaccination for risk groups.
The
European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)
has also updated the risk assessment report just a few days ago to clarify that "
mass vaccination against monkeypox is neither required nor recommended
", but the current prioritization of "men who have sex with men (MSM) with a higher risk of exposure, as well as front-line personnel with a risk of occupational exposure" is.
More than 2,000 cases in Spain
The
latest monkeypox report
published by the Ministry of Health and dated July 8, already counts in Spain, according to data from the National Epidemiological Surveillance Network (Renave),
2,034 confirmed cases
.
Almost half of them, 922 cases, have been detected in Madrid, followed by Catalonia (665) and Andalusia (181).
Regarding the profile of those affected, the latest ministerial report explained that "Spain is currently one of the most affected countries globally. During the months of May and June 2022, it presented an upward trend in reported cases that continues at the present time. The vast majority of the autonomous communities have reported cases, although with great differences between them."
And specifically, it detailed that "as in the rest of the countries, the cases have been
identified fundamentally in the MSM population (men who have sex with men)
, the transmission mechanism being in the vast majority of cases through very close physical contact, mainly in the context of high-risk sexual relations.However, if this sustained transmission is not optimally controlled, there is a significant risk that it will
spread to other population groups
by the same transmission mechanism, with the possibility of affecting other groups, and the appearance of severe cases in vulnerable populations"
The vice-president of the
Spanish Society of Epidemiology, Oscar Zurriaga
, was inclined just a few days ago to maintain the current vaccination protocol, which contemplates only the post-exposure vaccine and not risk groups, as there is already
a certain stigma about the disease that would be hindering the identification of cases and their control
: "The stigma that has begun to be released with this disease is playing absolutely against everything. It is a disease caused by close contact, and close contact is not only intimate contact, close contact can occur in many circumstances. If we think that this is limited to a specific population group and that we don't have to worry, it will lead us to not be able to handle the transmission of the virus well," warned the vice president of epidemiologists.
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