Spain will acquire doses of the Imvanex vaccine and the antiviral Tecovirimat to tackle the current outbreak of monkeypox that has already spread to twenty countries, in the number and terms established by the European Authority for Preparedness and Response to Health Emergencies (HERA).
This was explained by the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, at the press conference after the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System in which she conveyed this decision to the councillors.
It is HERA, which met on Thursday morning, "which will make the drugs available to the Member States". And it is this authority "which is in contact with the Danish company (Bavarian Nordic) and will establish the deadlines and the doses will be distributed proportionally", as happened with those of covid, which were distributed according to the population, "because what it is about is to access in an equitable manner" to doses that are "limited", she stressed.
The specific vaccine to be acquired is Imvanex, authorised by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2013 and by the FDA in 2019 and marketed in the USA under the name Jynneos, a formula developed by Bavarian Nordic that could protect against monkeypox in humans by around 85%, according to experience with vaccines used before the eradication of human smallpox.
While the antiviral is Tecovirimat SIGA, which has a mode of action on the extension of the viral particle in the body that limits and prevents it, thus slowing the spread of infection, and is authorised to treat smallpox, monkeypox and cowpox.
The next step, the minister specified, is the strategy to be applied, which is already being studied by the vaccine panel; in this regard, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) advised last week that "if smallpox vaccines are available in the country, vaccination of high-risk close contacts should be considered after a risk-benefit study".
To date, the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) has detected, from the 100 samples it has analysed, a total of 59 positive cases of orthopoxvirus, of which 20 have been confirmed by sequencing as monkeypox and the rest are awaiting results.
In addition, it has ruled out 41 that have tested negative for human smallpox and other orthopoxviruses. The director of this body, Cristóbal Belda, explained that almost 100% of the confirmed cases are of the West African variant, which is more benign than the central one.
