Pasteur Institute says it is ready to “test and vaccinate”

The medical center of the Pasteur Institute, specialized in travel medicine, “has triggered its internal protocol,” the Parisian institution said in a press release.

“Since this weekend, after activation by the General Directorate of Health, the emergency biological intervention unit of the Pasteur Institute has been analyzing, at the request of the health authorities, suspect samples”the institute said in a statement released Monday, August 19. The Pasteur Institute’s medical center, which specializes in travel medicine and treated patients with MPOX during the previous outbreak in 2022, “triggered its internal protocol allowing it to test patients presenting symptoms suggestive of MPOX (…) under optimal safety conditions”.

It is also held “available to the health authorities to vaccinate within its walls all people from the populations targeted by the health recommendations currently being reassessed”he assured. “This is a serious health situation”commented Yasmine Belkaid, Director General of the Pasteur Institute, quoted in the press release. “Today we are ready to test and vaccinate patients at the request of the authorities”she added.

In an interview with The Sunday Tribunethe resigning Minister Delegate for Health Frédéric Valletoux said he expected that “sporadic cases” of the new variant of mpox “appear, and probably soon” in France. On Thursday, Sweden announced that it had recorded a case of subtype clade 1b, the same strain that has appeared in the Democratic Republic of Congo since September 2023, more deadly and virulent than clade 2, endemic in West Africa. A case was also announced in Asia, in Pakistan.

The Ministry of Health reminds that since July 2022, a specific listening device for the mpox virus, responsible in particular for informing, advising and directing towards care systems, has been available. Monkeypox info service is accessible 7 days a week, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., on the toll-free number 0 801 90 80 69.