Ministry confirms participation in the centralized acquisition that will also be launched in the European Union of the antiviral Tecovirimat

The Minister of Health, Carolina Darius has decided to begin the acquisition of vaccines and antivirals. health Requests from several autonomous communities, including Madrid, seem to have been accepted, which have been calling for the purchase of vaccines for days. and antivirals due to an almost daily increase in people infected with monkeypox.

At the end of the Interterritorial Council meeting, Darías confirmed that Spain would “participate through” the vaccine procurement response plan. Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), As in the rest of the European Union, in this case for the acquisition of the Danish company Imvanex. In addition, a centralized procurement of antivirals will be done Board of Directors for Joint Purchase Agreements Joint Purchase Agreement (JPA), as was done in the case of COVID.

The minister has specified that the antiviral be Tecovirimat. Regarding the time frame and timing, he specified that “HERA will be the one to mark them. It is about making an equitable distribution, as it is of limited production”. In the case of vaccines, he insists that “Vales will be used based on the number of doses received and the recommendation made by the Vaccine Convention.”

has been in attendance with the minister Director of the Carlos III Institute of Health (ISCIII), Cristóbal Belda, who, in addition to giving a detailed explanation of the work done by ISCIII, have stated that monkeypox “is the first in our country, and that”A very significant percentage of infections today are zoonoses”. about the wounds caused by the disease he told that it is ,Wounds of extinct human smallpox. The infection is produced by the fluid contained in the papule. And this must be taken into account to control the contagion.

For cases that have been analyzed in 100 samples from ISCIII to date at the National Center for Microbiology, 59 have tested positive for non-human smallpox, of whom 20 have been confirmed as monkeypox After partial sequencing of the virus and rest are awaiting the results. In addition, 41 have tested negative for smallpox and other orthopoxviruses, so they are dismissed as cases. In this sense, Belda explained that “PCR allows for accurate diagnosis”. The ones now used are for orthopoxviruses (human, cow, vaccinia and monkey). “We take an extra step and from that test we extract a portion of the result and analyze it by sequencing each letter we find in the PCR. This allows us to be sure with 99.9% certainty that it is African. Relating to stress.” Western. And this is what spread to other countries in Europe, such as Germany,” elaborated Belda, adding that “patients do not require admission, can be treated symptomatically and are being managed in an outpatient setting.” “

Regional Counting of Monkeypox Cases

Health did not provide details of cases by communities. It has been the regions themselves that are recording new confirmed and suspected infections. in the matter of According to the latest figures provided by the Autonomous Administration, the number of people affected by monkeypox, the community of Madrid, is 48. is (45 more samples are still under study and 29 have been negative). Andaluca It is one of the communities that has seen a rise in the number of cases, now for the suspect: from the first two last weekend notified today to the 12 whose samples have also been sent to the National Center for Microbiology. This is precisely one of the sectors that requested the central government to procure vaccines.

The Canary Islands have two confirmed cases, while the rest of the autonomous regions, except Extremadura, have all been notified. In this case, the sample matched a woman who eventually tested negative for monkeypox and nearby Vasco, with two confirmed cases. Galicia Three continues to be studied; Castilla-La Mancha, two; Aragon, one; Comunidad Valenciana, two (one in Valencia and the other in Castellón) and Castilla y León, which was the last region to report a possible case.

What are other countries doing?

The United Kingdom has made the vaccine available for people in close contact and infected, One thousand doses of Imvanex Formula have already been released, from the Danish laboratory Babyrian Nordic, but also from the United Kingdom Health Protection Agency (UKHSA). It is not yet confirmed how many patients, close contacts and health workers have been put at risk.

In Germany’s case, it has already approached a Danish company to acquire 44,000 doses, despite a few confirmed cases. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach confirmed this last Tuesday.

In this way, Our Gallic neighbor has announced that it will launch a targeted vaccination campaign of health workers and contact cases of monkeypox infection, It has been the Minister of Health, Brigitte Bourguignon, who has confirmed the fact, although “I did not expect an outbreak of the disease”. Another European country that has started acquiring supplements is Denmark. Danes will get 200 vaccines against monkeypox Working to buy thousands more this week from the Netherlands and up to 3,000 doses. While the field is evaluating vaccination of close contacts of people infected with the disease, Health Minister Magnus Hunick has said. “On Friday we will receive 200 monkeypox vaccines in cooperation with the Dutch government,” he told public broadcaster DR.

The Swiss headquarters of WHO has more than 2.4 million doses, dating from the final years of the eradication program. From the US, it is said that there are more than 1,000 doses of the Danish vaccine in the national reserve and they expect that level to rise very quickly in the coming weeks.

Bavarian Nordic, which has an annual production capacity of 30 million doses, told EL Mundo a few days ago that it has approached several countries interested in buying its vaccine, without providing details. When in doubt about whether requests would need to wait longer in production, he replied that it was “a very theoretical question as it depends on many factors, such as production capacity at a given point in time.” , availability of raw material and much more.”, The manufacturing process itself is not long (weeks), but it can take months under normal circumstances to have the required documentation and quality work to make the product available to healthcare providers.”