The Department of Medical Science is seeking volunteers who received the smallpox vaccine when it was still being widely administered prior to 1980 to test whether they have been left with any residual immunity against monkeypox having successfully cultivated test strains of the new virus in their laboratories.
"It will be known in a week if there are enough volunteers," Dr Supakit Sirilak, chief of the Department of Medical Sciences, said on Monday.
Dr Supakit said the department had cultured enough monkeypox virus cells to begin clinical trials on three groups of 10 participants aged 40, 50 and 60 years old respectively.
