The ministry of Health called for responsibility and going to the doctor to those who have symptoms consistent with the monkeypoxwhich adds around 4,600 cases after some 280 were registered, and asked communities to quickly put on the vaccines, of which Spain will receive 7,000 more this week. Ceuta already received the first doses at the end of July.
The government, said Minister Carolina Darias de Gijón, is trying to obtain more doses of Imvanex, whose production is “limited”, but has made it clear that “it is so important to obtain vaccines that way they are inoculated by the communities”.
“I am aware of the effort, but I ask to maintain it to continue to vaccinate because it is the way to continue to save lives”, he added.
In our country, the monkeypox vaccination plan provides for pre-exposure prophylaxis in people with high-risk and post-exposure practices of close contacts, especially those at high risk of serious illness such as children, pregnant women and immunocompromised people, in addition to healthcare and laboratory personnel who have had an impact on the use of their PPE.
For now, the first 5,300 doses of the 11,400 that Spain has acquired through Hera, the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority, have been distributed at the request of communities, in addition to the other 200 which it has purchased from a third State. By the end of the week, Darias said, another 7,000 will arrive.
Autonomic infections
According to the latest data update published this Tuesday by the Ministry of Health, Madrid is the community with the highest figure (1,766), ahead of Catalonia (1,463) and, much further, Andalusia ( 545); Valencian Community (236); Basque Country (115); Canary Islands (107) and Balearic Islands (89).
Far behind, Aragon (45); Galicia (42); Asturias (41); Castile and Leon (33); Castile-La Mancha (23); Murcia (23); Extremadura (20); Cantabria (15); Navarre (11) and La Rioja, with 3. Ceuta and Melilla they are not on this list.
Two dead in Spain
The death toll remains at 2, they report from this department. They are two young men, including one from the Valencian Community, whose exact reasons for death are still under investigation, although the signs point to encephalitis associated with the infection.
And another, a 31-year-old boy in Cordoba, whose samples are also being analyzed to determine whether the cause of death was meningoencephalitis or another pathology. Worldwide, 8 people have died.
In this context, the Minister called for the responsibility of those who show symptoms to go to the doctor immediately, so that “no one is left without seeing a doctor for reasons of stigma”.
Symptoms
Awaiting the update of case characteristics on Friday, the most common symptom among patients was anogenital rash (60.3%), followed by fever (56.6%), rash at other locations (non-anogenital or bucco-buccal) (52.8%) and lymphadenopathy (52.2%).
As in the rest of the countries, the majority of cases have occurred in the MSM population (men who have sex with men), mainly in the context of high-risk sex, which is the cause of more than 82% positives.
However, recalls Health, “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 other groups affected, and the occurrence of severe cases in vulnerable populations.