The government on Friday expanded the possibility of vaccination in pharmacies against monkeypox, a move taken at a time when the epidemic is slowing markedly in France and, more broadly, in Europe and America.
Vaccination against monkeypox will be possible “in the pharmacies designated by the director general of the regional health agency,” according to a decree published in the Official Gazette.
Currently, vaccination against monkeypox is carried out mainly in specific centers, for example in hospitals, and only five pharmacies can participate in the framework of a limited experiment.
The General Directorate of Health specified that, for the moment, 25 French pharmacies have been designated to carry out the vaccination. Among the original five, some are part but others have abandoned the experiment.
The number of cases dropped drastically
This move comes against a background in which the monkeypox epidemic, which has swept across the world since spring, is clearly calming down in France and elsewhere. Less than 100 cases have been reported in the country for a week, according to a point published this Thursday night by the French public health agency, while this weekly figure was around 500 at the beginning of summer.
More generally, last week “the number of monkeypox cases reported in Europe and the Americas decreased, contributing to a global downward trend since August,” the World Health Organization (WHO) summarized in a report released on Wednesday.
The presence of the disease is unusual in these regions of the world, as monkeypox has also been observed for several decades in a dozen African countries.
Source: BFM TV
