A Scottish health board has begun offering doses of vaccine against Monkeypox as a national rollout gets underway. 

NHS Grampian said that "eligible individuals" would be offered an appointment and would be contacted by phone or test in the coming weeks. 

A total of 69 cases of the disease - which can occasionally be fatal - have been identified in Scotland since the end of May, including in one woman, but there is currently no evidence of community transmission.

Public health experts are aiming to vaccinate around 6,500 people in Scotland against monkeypox as supplies of the jag increase.

Cases have been concentrated mostly in Glasgow, Edinburgh and other urban centres, but every health board in Scotland has reported at least one case.

NHS Grampian sent out a message on social media, saying: "NHS Grampian is now providing Monkeypox vaccinations.

"Eligible individuals will be contacted by services to offer an appointment by phone or text throughout the summer."

It comes as there are signs that the monkeypox outbreak in the UK has “plateaued”.

Dame Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said cases have decreased over the last few weeks.

But she suggested vaccine doses may “run out in some areas” before new consignments arrive.

Dame Jenny said the UK had procured the “maximum amount of vaccine available”.

The UK has ordered 150,000 doses of smallpox vaccine – which has now also been licensed for monkeypox.

Health officials initially secured 50,000 doses and sexual health leaders have suggested there will be a period between current doses running out before the next batch arrives.

Dame Jenny told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: “We have some early signs, we hope – always remaining vigilant and cautious – that the outbreak in this country is actually plateaued and over a four-week period has started to steadily decrease.

“A couple of weeks ago it was 35 cases a day, now it’s around 20 cases a day.

“We’re really grateful to both those individuals at high risk and of course our sexual health clinics particularly for providing the vaccination.

“There may be a short period, probably of three or four weeks, where vaccines may run out in some areas.

“In those cases, we are ensuring that the individuals who have come forward are checked and will be invited again, so they just need to ensure that their names are available. As soon as the vaccine’s in, we will get it into people’s arms.

“We’ve rolled out, as you would expect, the vaccines that we have – so that’s just over 50,000 doses to the system.

“The most important thing in managing this outbreak is to get the vaccines into people’s arms – (vaccines go) to local areas and they will then move that into people’s arms so we protect them.

“This is not what you might call a standard national vaccination programme, this currently is a vaccination programme which is an outbreak incident response approach.

“What that means is we will use the vaccine on a risk-based assessment in the best way we can to bring the outbreak under control.”