The European Commission’s Health Preparedness and Response Authority (Hera) bought an additional 54,530 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s third-generation vaccine, bringing the total number of doses purchased by member states to respond to the epidemic to 163,620 of monkeypox in progress.
The European Commission has specified that deliveries of EU-funded monkeypox vaccines will continue in the coming weeks and months and throughout the rest of the year to EU member states, Norway and Iceland.
Over seven thousand cases of monkeypox in the EU
“I am concerned about the growing number of monkeypox cases in the EU. We now have over 7,000 cases in the EU, an increase of almost 50% compared to a week ago”, stresses the Commissioner for Health. Stella Kyriakides.
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“We have already delivered around 25,000 doses to 6 Member States. We have now secured over 160,000 doses of vaccines to respond promptly to the progression of the spread of this virus,” he adds.
According to what the spokesperson of the EU executive for Health explained, Stefan de Keersmaeckerduring the press briefing in Brussels, “5,300 doses were delivered to Spain, 5,300 to Germany, 2,700 to Portugal, 3,040 to Belgium, 2,700 to Sweden, 5,300 to Italy and 1,400
to Ireland “.
Fauci: “Situation in the US to be taken very seriously”
Cases of monkeypox in the United States are on the rise, and the situation “needs to be taken very seriously” according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House Medical Advisor. “It is a situation that we absolutely must take seriously. We do not yet know its scope and potential, but we must behave as if it has the ability to spread much more widely than it is spreading right now,” he told CNN. .
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked at least 1,814 probable or confirmed cases of monkeypox in the United States, as of last Friday. These numbers, according to Fauci, are “most likely underestimated”. “Whenever something like this emerges – he added -, you are probably always looking at what could be, we don’t know yet, the tip of the iceberg, so this is why we need to carry out the tests more vigorously” .
Most of the confirmed cases, the BBC reports, involve men who have sex with other men, although anyone can be infected with the virus. “We still don’t have all the vaccine we want right now,” said the director of the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Friday. Rochelle Walenskyduring a briefing.
The United States received 370,000 of the approximately 7 million doses of the vaccine that the government purchased in total. But millions of doses won’t arrive until next year.
The federal government has distributed approximately 156,000 doses nationwide and plans to begin shipping another 130,000 doses starting Monday, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.