EU buys vaccine as monkeypox cases increase

The EU announced Tuesday it has completed a contract to purchase nearly 110,000 doses of the monkeypox vaccine to distribute it to EU member states, as well as Norway and Iceland.

The vaccine is currently only authorized at EU level to protect against smallpox, however it also protects against monkeypox.Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for Health, said the bloc was responding in "quick and collective" fashion to the outbreak.It came as the World Health Organization was to convene an emergency committee of experts to determine if the expanding monkeypox outbreak that has mysteriously spread outside Africa should be considered a global health emergency.