The spread of monkeypox continues unchecked: in just one month the number of infections has doubled in Catalonia and Spain. International health authorities have already declared the simultaneous outbreaks last May in the United Kingdom as a public health emergency, but the real and future behaviour of the virus remains an unknown for experts, who dare not predict how many people may catch it nor what health consequences may result from the contagions. Spain is the European country which has detected the most cases (4,900) with the Madrid region leading the way (1,817). It has also reported two deaths (two men in their 30s in Andalusia and the Valencian Country). These are, so far, the only deaths in Europe linked to the virus. The trickle of cases coincides with a stagnation in the production of vaccines, which delays the prevention and protection strategy for the most vulnerable groups, and also with a shortage of some antiviral treatments given exceptionally to hospital patients in a serious condition (2.8% of diagnoses).

The Department of Health will vaccinate those with a high risk of developing the monkeypox against the disease starting on Thursday. Given the low availability of doses, the health system will call people following its own prioritisation criteria. The Secretary of Public Health, Carmen Cabezas, has explained that a double strategy will be rolled out, following the Ministry of Health's guidelines, and only taking risk factors into account. On the one hand, vaccination will be offered to children, pregnant women and patients under immunosuppressive treatment who have been in contact with a case in the first four days after exposure, as well as to health professionals who were not wearing any type of protection when they attended a case. On the other hand, preventive vaccination will be started for people who have not been exposed to the virus but who are at high risk of infection: people who engage in high-risk sexual activity, mainly men who have sex with other men, who are taking prEP or who have HIV. In addition, they must be under 45 years of age (to exclude anyone previously vaccinated against smallpox), must not have suffered from the disease, must not have had contact with a positive case in the previous 10 days and must not present symptoms compatible with the infection.

Health has confirmed this Thursday afternoon that four more cases of monkeypox have been detected in Catalonia. They are all people with links to other cases detected in the State. These are the first confirmed cases in Spain, after over twenty cases were detected in the rest of Spain, most of them in Madrid.