Three monkeypox cases detected are unrelated

It was revealed that all three patients are men aged between 40-49, 30-39 and 20-29 who recently returned from another European country.

Galina Zagrebnevienė, chief specialist at the Health Promotion Division of the Ministry of Health, said Friday that the first individual diagnosed with monkeypox earlier this week had contact with five people. Another patient had contact with two people. All seven contacts are being monitored but so far have not displayed monkeypox symptoms.

The chief specialist said a total of eight tests for monkeypox have been conducted so far and three of them were positive.

She also stated that vaccination against monkeypox is not carried out in Lithuania yet because vaccines are still to be delivered. In August, 1,400 vaccine doses are expected to be shipped, which would be used to vaccinate people that had high-risk contacts, as well as doctors and laboratory staff. In the nearest future, there will not be enough vaccines for everyone who wishes to get jabs.

Furthermore, the representative of the Ministry of Health said that smallpox vaccine used to be administered in Lithuania until 1980, but it is hard to estimate the share of the population that might be immune to monkeypox, especially as the smallpox vaccine does not necessarily safeguard against monkeypox.