Apparently, a new strain of monkeypox has been discovered in Britain.
According to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), a person who recently traveled to West Africa was admitted to Royal Liverpool University Hospital with severe symptoms of illness. The man has a strain of the monkeypox virus that has not been found in England before.
“Preliminary genome sequencing carried out by the UKHSA shows that in this case the current outbreak strain is not circulating in the UK,” the health agency said.
Contact tracing will now be performed to see if there are any other linked cases. Monkeypox is endemic to animals in parts of West Africa and has caused outbreaks in humans there.
To date there have been 3,413 official cases of monkeypox in the UK. Most of those affected are homosexual and bisexual men who have had sex with men and have become infected as a result.
Austria
In Austria there have been 273 reported so far monkey pox-cases given. So far is related to monkey pox (Monkeypox, MPX) no life-threatening case of illness has occurred. Only in a few cases did those affected have to be treated in hospitals.
Vienna finds an “extremely high demand” for a vaccination According to the City Councilor for Health, up to 15,000 people would probably be immunized.
But there is currently little vaccine (the traditional smallpox vaccine) in the country. “We would very much like to vaccinate more,” assured City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker. The fact that some of them would go to Berlin, for example, to be immunized is absurd.
“I hope that the Minister of Health (Johannes Rauch, Greens, note) will quickly come up with how to get more vaccine. We will need it urgently.” In any case, the recommendation of the National Vaccination Committee (NIG) cannot be implemented at the moment.