Expert Calls for All Young Homosexual Men to Get Monkeypox Vaccine

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Chris Tomlinson

Italian infectious disease expert Matteo Bassetti has called on young homosexual men to take the vaccine for the monkeypox virus, arguing that the number of people infected with the disease could rapidly grow.

Professor Bassetti, who serves as head of the infectious diseases department at the San Martino hospital in Genoa, called for young homosexual men to get vaccinated against the virus, claiming that while the virus has a relatively low death rate, the symptoms ar enot mild.

“It is an infection that is anything but mild. When the numbers grow so violently it can happen that there are serious cases, even fatal. The only way to protect ourselves? Prevention and vaccination to be allocated immediately to young homosexual men between 18 and 45 years old,” Bassetti said, Il Giornale reports.

According to the newspaper, Italy has only received around 5,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine so far. The country has seen over 700 full-blown cases of the virus, with the largest number occurring in the Lombardy region.

Of those infected, just ten are women, with 704 of the confirmed cases being men. The average age of those infected is around 37 but children as young as 14 have been reported to have caught the virus.

Francesco Vaia, director at Rome’s Spallanzani Hospital, has stated that prior immunisation against smallpox, a disease related to monkeypox, could be beneficial to those who catch the virus.

“Preliminary data indicate that more than 90 per cent of people who were vaccinated 40 years ago for smallpox have antibodies that react with the monkeypox virus, sometimes even in high quantities,” he said.

Vaia has previously noted that monkeypox may be transferred through semen after fragments of the monkeypox virus was reportedly found in the semen of several patients in Italy

“[H]aving an infectious virus in semen is a factor that tips the balance strongly in favour of the hypothesis that sexual transmission is one of the ways in which this virus is transmitted,” Vaia said.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

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