Smallpox

As the lone laboratory manufacturing a licensed vaccine against monkeypox, Danish company Bavarian Nordic has seen its order book fill up as the usually rare disease spreads around the world.

Turkey has no monkeypox virus cases as the latest tests on four suspected patients have emerged negative, the country's health minister has said.

"Tests have been made on four patients suspected to be infected with monkeypox in Istanbul. All are negative," Fahrettin Koca tweeted late on June 4.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on June 3 it was aware of more than 700 global cases of monkeypox, including 21 in the United States, with investigations now suggesting it is spreading inside the country.

The United States is preparing to give monkeypox vaccines to close contacts of people infected and to deploy treatments, with five cases now either confirmed or probable and the number likely to rise, officials said Monday.

"Words that can express so much in a certain period are rare," Merriam-Webster said in a statement.

Greek health authorities started vaccinating people aged over 85 against Covid-19 on Saturday, while continuing to inoculate doctors and nurses.

The first person from that age group to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech jab in Athens' Evangelismos Hospital was a woman called Kassiani, who will turn 91 in a few days. She was followed by Irene, aged 90.

The election speculation sparked by Monday's cabinet reshuffle is, to put it mildly, out of the question. 

The country is still in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic; the nationwide inoculation campaign, still in its early stages, presents the authorities with a huge challenge; and the conditions surrounding the economy's return to normality are uncertain. 

"The most important thing was to find out how it was transmitted, because at the beginning, it was said that it was by droplets. It was strange to me that there were 1.000 cases a day and I said - if we all kissed and spat on each other, it wouldn't be like this," says Dr Ana Gligic, who stopped "smallpox epidemic" about 50 years ago.

No deaths have been reported in this country.
A month has passed since the last transmission of the virus, so the authorities made the decision to open the country. Experts say that Vietnam avoided the catastrophe by reacting in time, reports Jutarnji hr.

"When we were struck by variola vera, there was not as much fear, panic and lies as there is today for something that has weaker symptoms than the ordinary flu. If there were no tests, one would not even know what these people died of, since it was thought to be from flu or sneezing when it comes to the people with impaired immunity and damaged health", he said.