In France, nearly 3,000 cases of monkey pox have been confirmed. As the country continues to vaccinate the target population affected by the disease, the public health agency announces that 47,000 more doses have been delivered within a week. But this figure does not meet the estimate of several associations fighting against HIV, which require 37,000 doses per week to vaccinate all people at risk.
As of Thursday August 19, 2,889 confirmed cases of monkeypox had been identified in France, reports the health agency Public Health France in a situation update. All concerned male adults with the exception of 34 women and 7 children, the agency said. That is three additional children since the previous report published on Wednesday. Otherwise, contamination of a dog by its masters in Paris was reported last week in the medical journal The Lancet.
Slight decrease
The number of new cases registered in one week is down slightly compared to the previous week (216 against 250). But that does not necessarily mean a slowing the epidemic because contact cases with suggestive clinical signs are not necessarily tested.
To counter the epidemic, 189 vaccination sites (centres, pharmacies, etc.) were opened in the territory and a total of 103,000 doses of vaccine had been delivered there as of Thursday, an additional 46,475 doses in a week. As of August 17, 43,767 doses had been administered, reports the Ministry of Health.
Jean-Daniel Lelièvre is head of the infectious diseases department at the Henri Mondor hospital in Créteil, south of Paris. For him, all the additional doses are good to take: and this even if the world health organization recently recommended injecting only one dose instead of two, making the vaccine not fully effective:
The more we increase the number of doses, the more effective we will be. The question is whether this efficiency will be sufficient after a single dose, probably not. It is always relevant to take a dose of vaccine because we will protect people who are affected against the most severe forms. Then, if we really want to contain an infection and prevent it from spreading outside a population, we have to be really effective and we will be really effective with two vaccine doses. So afterwards, all this is a subtle balance between the number of doses and the possibility that we have of making several doses of vaccines, in my opinion we must continue the efforts
Target audience of approximately 250 000 people
Since July 11, vaccination against monkeypox has been offered nationwide to men who have sex with men and trans people declaring multiple sexual partners, sex workers and professionals working in places of sexual consumption.
This target population was estimated in July, for only men who have had sex with men who have multiple partners in the last six months, at “ about 250,000 people », by the High Authority for Health (HAS)
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