Britain is running low on monkeypox vaccine doses, with one city in particular seeing jab appointments dry up shortly after it hosted a Pride parade.
The United Kingdom is due to run out of monkeypox vaccination doses before being restocked in September, with the city of Brighton in particular reportedly suspending walk-in jabs shortly after the city’s Pride parade due to its supplies running chronically low.
Occurring at the beginning of the month, Brighton’s 30th Pride parade hit the media last week after one police force that attended the event announced that it did not want those who disagreed with its progressive politics to even bother applying to join it.
According to a report by The Telegraph, the United Kingdom would be out of jabs long before a shipment of 100,000 more doses was delivered by the sole provider of monkeypox vaccines, Bavarian Nordic.
With the shortage appearing to be particularly bad in Brighton, a local Labour MP for the area said that only pre-booked appointments for shots will now be honoured.
“My understanding is that if you are not vaccinated in the next couple of weeks then it will be too late and you’ll have to wait until September,” left-wing House of Commons member Lloyd Russell-Moyle is reported as saying in regards to the situation.
According to official information published by the British government on the outbreak, there have been 2,914 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the country as of August 8th, with a further 103 instances where officials have reportedly judged it “highly probable” that someone has contracted the disease.
The government also states that the vast majority of those with the disease are “gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men”, and that “there is no robust evidence of sustained transmission outside some sexual networks”.
Officials currently recommend that gay men who “have multiple partners, participate in group sex or attend ‘sex on premises’ venues” get vaccinated, along with healthcare workers who care for those sick with the virus, as well as those who are confirmed to have had “close contact” with someone infected with the disease.
The World Health Organization declared the sudden surge of outbreaks of the disease across the Western world a global “public health emergency” late last month — a move that will reportedly greatly benefit Chinese manufacturers, who are due to make a killing from test kits for the disease.
At least two firms — Shanghai-based Liferiver and the Taizhou-based Jiangsu Bioperfectus Technologies — are reported to have received significant numbers of orders for monkeypox test kits mere hours after the WHO declaration.