The High Authority of Health “considers that the targets of this vaccination remain unchanged since its previous recommendations”.
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The health authorities are maintaining their recommendations regarding the MPOX vaccine. The High Authority for Health (HAS) has not extended vaccination to new categories of the population, it announced on Monday, September 2 in a press release accompanying the update of the recommendations. If it “considers that the targets of this vaccination remain unchanged since its previous recommendations“, the High Authority of Health nevertheless suggests a booster dose for people already considered at risk.
This recommendation is valid regardless of the person’s vaccination schedule (one, two or three doses already taken), but on condition that the last dose dates back more than two years.
Finally, the HAS does not recommend a vaccine for people who caught MPOX during the 2022 epidemic, judging their natural immunity to be already sufficient.
The HAS was contacted this summer by the Ministry of Health in a context where several epidemics of mpox, formerly described as “monkey pox”are currently underway in central Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are fueled by a different version of the strain that caused the 2022 outbreak. That was caused by the “clade 2”which is still circulating quietly in many countries, including France. The epidemics in the DRC are caused by the “clade 1”which caused hundreds of child deaths.
But the situation is complicated by the fact that a new version of clade 1, variant 1b, has appeared in the DRC and seems to circulate mainly between adults during sexual contact, as was already the case in the 2022 epidemic.
In this context, the question arose of extending preventive vaccination beyond the groups already targeted for two years: they essentially include men who have homosexual relations, male or female prostitutes and anyone working in places dedicated to sexual encounters.