Monkeypox Disease Reaches 55 Cases, Spain Ready To Buy Imvanex Vaccine Made In Denmark

Illustration of monkey smallpox (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Spain will buy monkeypox vaccine, as the disease in the country has reached 55 cases on Wednesday.

Spanish Health Minister Carolina Darias said the government would buy the Imvanex vaccine made by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, but she did not specify the dosage amount.

"We will distribute the vaccine proportionally among (17 Spanish regions)," Darias said as quoted by Antara, Thursday.

Of Spain's total cases, 51 cases have been reported in the Madrid region, most of them traced to an adult sauna that closed last week, while four are in the Canary Islands.

Several cases in both regions were linked to the 10-day Gay Pride festival in Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, where 80,000 people gathered in early May, regional authorities in Madrid and Gran Canaria said.

In neighboring Portugal, the DGS health authority confirmed 10 new cases of monkeypox in the country on Wednesday, bringing the total to 49 cases.

The two countries have been one of the main centers of recent outbreaks of the usually mild viral disease outside of its endemic areas in parts of west and central Africa.

The DGS said all confirmed cases had been found in men, mostly under the age of 40. No patients were hospitalized.

Madrid has also identified several private residences where transmission of the monkeypox virus occurred, and some of them have been visited by people from the UK, a regional government spokesman said.

British authorities were the first to report cases of monkeypox in the recent outbreak on May 7.

Most of the infections detected globally so far in the outbreak have not been severe. Many, but not all, have been reported in men who have sex with men.

Symptoms of monkeypox include fever and a characteristic bumpy rash.