The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Monday approved the extension of the use of a smallpox vaccine to fight the spread of monkeypox . As of today, the Netherlands considers vaccination to have started with Imvanex, produced by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic.
The health authorities of the Netherlands reported that the immunization campaign began in the capital, Amsterdam, and in the city of The Hague. The focus is placed, for a first instance, on people belonging to risk groups .
Some 32,000 people are scheduled to receive the first dose. Four weeks later, the second component is scheduled to be injected. After both doses, it is understood that the vaccine would provide a certain degree of immunity.
Among high-risk people, the Netherlands considers those who are prescribed HIV prevention drugs, those who have the virus and those who have contracted or been exposed to sexually transmitted diseases.
Last Thursday, more than 700 cases were confirmed in the country, mostly in the provinces of North Holland and Flevoland, according to information from the Dutch News portal.
Monkeypox begins with symptoms such as fever, headache, muscle aches, exhaustion, and swollen lymph nodes. This disease can be fatal, although it is usually milder than smallpox.
It is transmitted to people from different wild animals, such as rodents and primates. It can even be transmitted between people after direct or indirect contact.
This weekend the World Health Organization declared this disease a public health emergency of international concern. The World Health Organization ( WHO ) raised the level of alert for the recent outbreak of monkeypox in the world by declaring an international public health emergency . After this measure, this disease reached a threat status that only Covid-19 and polio have .
Since May this year, more than 16,000 cases have been detected in 75 countries. Related to this, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , director general of the WHO, maintained that many of them went “through new modes of transmission”, about which they understand “very little”.