Boys and Trans Minors Sexually Active with Men Offered Monkeypox Vax

A vial and syringes with the vaccine against smallpox and monkeypox at Checkpoint Bln in B
Emmanuele Contini/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Chris Tomlinson

The Public Health Agency of Sweden has announced it will be expanding its monkeypox vaccine programme to male and transgender minors under 17 who engage in sexual relations with males.

The Public Health Agency of Sweden states that certain groups are recommended to receive the monkeypox vaccine despite a fall in overall cases since the country was able to gain access to the vaccine in the summer of 2022.

According to the agency, males who engage in sex with other males, along with transgender people who engage in sex with males, are at increased risk of contracting monkeypox.

“Now there is an experience of vaccination of children and young people. Therefore, vaccination can also be offered to [males] who are 17 years old or younger, belong to one of the groups above and are in need of vaccination,” the agency said.

The agency also lists people having sex with men for money, i.e. prostitutes, as being at a heightened risk for catching the virus, along with medical workers who may come into contact with people who have the virus.

Since the summer of last year, Sweden has administered thousands of first doses and second doses of the monkeypox vaccine.

The Public Health Agency of Sweden has also begun referring to the monkeypox virus as “Mpox” after the World Health Organization (WHO) suggested that using the term monkeypox was racially insensitive.

“Mpox will become a preferred term, replacing monkeypox, after a transition period of one year,” the WHO said last year. “This serves to mitigate the concerns raised by experts about confusion caused by a name change in the midst of a global outbreak.”

The disease was seen in several countries across Europe last year, with Dr David Heymann, who formerly headed the WHO’s emergencies department, claiming that the spread was likely linked to two raves in Spain and Belgium.

“We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission,” he said.

British officials also called on those infected with monkeypox to halt their sexual activity in an effort to curb the disease.

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

 

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