Belgium extends preventive monkeypox vaccination to at risk groups
The Federal Health Department’s Risk Management Group has decided to extend vaccination against monkeypox to groups that are particularly at risk from contacting the virus. Previously only those that had had a high-risk contact were vaccinated. The Risk Management Group took its decision at a meeting held on Friday.
Belgium currently has 3,040 doses of the monkeypox vaccine available and has ordered a further 30,000 doses. The Antwerp University vaccinologist Pierre Van Damme, himself a Member of Belgium’s High Council for Health, told VRT News that the vaccine order should arrive in Belgium in October or November.
Meanwhile, 393 people have contracted monkeypox since the end of May in Belgium. They are men between the ages of 20 and 71. The virus has been circulating within in the homosexual male community. Calls for the preventive vaccination of those most at risk have been mounting recently.
Although so far the current outbreak of monkeypox in Belgium has only affected gay men, it is not a sexually transmitted disease. It is transmitted by skin-to-skin contact and as such could be passed from person to person by other means than engaging in sexual intercourse.
The limited number of vaccines currently available here have been reserved for people who have had high-risk contacts. These are people who have had sexual intercourse or prolonged skin-to-skin contact with someone who has been found to be infected.
On the advice of the Risk Assessment Group, the Risk Management Group decided on Friday to preventatively vaccinate certain groups of people deemed to be particularly at risk from monkeypox. Four groups will be considered for preventative vaccination from next week.
• men who have sex with other men, are HIV-positive and who have had at least two sexually transmitted diseases during the past last year
• male sex workers and transgender sex workers
• people with immune system disorders
• laboratory personnel that work in labs that cultivate the virus
In total around 2,000 people fall into these groups. Most receive a first dose of the monkeypox vaccine next week and a second dose when the order for additional vaccines arrives in the autumn.
However, people with immune system conditions will receive their second dose 28 days after the first. The monkeypox vaccines will be administered at 9 designated centres across the country.