Ribeirão Preto intensifies vaccination after monkey deaths from yellow fever

“The secretariat is contacting all these families so that the children can be vaccinated. There is no need for the population to queue at health centers”, said the Secretary of Health, Mauricio Godinho, at a press conference.

The vaccination schedule provides for a dose of vaccine at 9 months of age and another at 4 years of age. In people over 5 years of age who have not been previously vaccinated, the single dose schedule is used.

‘Don’t kill the monkeys’

USP notified the Zoonoses Surveillance Unit so that the monkeys found dead could undergo necropsy. The samples collected were taken to the virology laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine, where the animals were infected with the yellow fever virus.

After confirmation, researcher and infectious diseases professor Benedito Fonseca appealed to the population not to kill the animals. “For now, there is no reason to be alarmed because this virus is only circulating in the forest sector and in these monkeys,” he said. “It is very important that they are not decimated, because they also serve to alert us that the virus is circulating in this location.”

Monkeys do not transmit yellow fever. Despite being hosts of the disease in its wild cycle, it is transmitted only by infected mosquitoes. In forest areas, the virus is transmitted by mosquitoes of the genera Haemagogues and Sabethes and, in urban regions, by Aedes aegypti, the same vector of dengue viruses , zika and chikungunya.