Action reaction.
While three cases of monkey pox have been detected in France, the authorities have decided to react: the High Authority for Health recommends vaccinating contact cases at risk of infected people, including unprotected caregivers, in a press release published Tuesday.
“HAS today recommends the implementation of a reactive vaccination strategy, i.e. around a confirmed case: adults whose contact with an infected person is considered to be at risk, including health professionals exposed without individual protective measures”, details the HAS, seized by the General Directorate of Health.
Vaccination four days after contact
The HAS therefore recommends vaccinating these people with the Imvanex vaccine against smallpox.
It should be “administered ideally within 4 days after the risky contact and at most 14 days later with a two-dose regimen (or three doses in immunocompromised subjects), spaced 28 days apart”.
This Imvanex vaccine, said to be 3rd generation and authorized for adults only, is better tolerated than the others.
This strategy recommended by the HAS joins that decided in the United States, namely to vaccinate “caregivers, very close personal contacts, particularly those at risk of developing a serious case of the disease”.
Many cases in Western countries
Monkeypox or "simian orthopoxvirus" is a rare disease whose pathogen can be transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa.
Its symptoms resemble, in less serious, those which one observed in the past at the subjects reached of smallpox: fever, headaches, muscular pains, dorsal, during the first five days.
Several Western countries including France, Germany, Great Britain, the United States, Spain and Sweden have identified cases in recent days.
On Monday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) judged that the risk of contagion was “very low” in the population, but significant in people with several sexual partners.
Its transmission can be stopped in non-endemic countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).