More vaccines needed for 2,500 people most at risk

The Public Health Agency (PHA) says it has a fifth of the supply it needs to vaccinate those most at risk of monkeypox in Northern Ireland.

But it said it hoped there would be sufficient vaccines by September for the 2,500 people deemed eligible.

The PHA said cases, which have risen to 18 in Northern Ireland, are mainly seen in gay and bisexual men, but anyone could potentially catch the virus.

The virus is not new but only arrived in Northern Ireland in May 2022.

Monkeypox is caused by the monkeypox virus, a member of the same family of viruses as smallpox, although it is much less severe and experts say chances of infection are low.

It occurs mostly in remote parts of central and west African countries, near tropical rainforests. In those regions, there have been more than 1,200 cases of monkeypox since the start of the year.

Two main strains of the virus - west African and central African - are known to exist, and it's the milder one from west Africa which is now circulating in other regions of the world.

COVID-19 can strike hard and fast — especially when you are pregnant. Alison Cahill, a specialist in maternal–fetal medicine at the Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas, vividly remembers a patient from the first wave of the pandemic who was 26 weeks pregnant and woke up one morning with a cough. Her condition declined so rapidly that she was admitted to hospital that evening. Within six hours, she had been transferred to the intensive-care unit (ICU), where she was sedated so that she could be placed on a heart–lung bypass machine. Owing to safety precautions, her husband had to communicate with the medical team from the parking area.