Thousands of tiny vials of a rare and valuable vaccine are about to be sent to health clinics across Israel for the country’s first blitz to control an outbreak of monkeypox.
Despite having recorded only 125 cases of the disease, Israeli health authorities have taken the unusual approach of securing 10,000 monkeypox vaccines for its residents.
They have also expressed a desire to get more supplies in the future.
Gal Wagner — an LGBT medical specialist in Tel Aviv — said he had been “flooded with requests” for the vaccine since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared monkeypox a global emergency, the agency’s highest level of warning.
“People are afraid of the virus and they really want to protect themselves,” Dr Wagner said.
Dr Wagner’s clinic will be among the first to offer the vaccine to high-risk patients in Israel, including men born after 1980 who have HIV, men on HIV pre-exposure meds or men who have contracted a sexually transmitted disease this year.
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Going hard and fast on vaccination is a technique Israel relied upon when COVID-19 emerged.
Early on in the pandemic, the government cut a deal with Pfizer to get supplies of the vaccine in exchange for giving the pharmaceutical company access to Israeli’s personal health data.
When vaccines became widely available in early 2021, the country was credited with having the world’s fastest rollout.
