Australian health officials reported on Friday the first case of monkeypox diagnosed in a traveler who had just returned from the UK to Melbourne. A possible second case is under observation in a Sydney resident who recently traveled to Europe.
Both cases are considered mild, New South Wales Chief Medical Officer Kerry Chant told reporters. The Melbourne man is said to be in his 30s and the Sydney patient in his 40s. Patients and close contacts have been asked to isolate themselves in their homes.
Chant said Australian health authorities are working to “detect and treat any cases of monkeypox, including clinical alerts from doctors and hospitals”.
“Sometimes cases in non-endemic countries are reported to returning travelers or their close contacts, as well as owners of imported pets. People can become infected with monkeypox through very close contact with an infected person. The infection is usually mild and most people recover within a few weeks,” he said. constant.
Deborah Friedman, Victoria’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, recommended that all travelers be tested for monkeypox with symptoms such as fever, headache and a clear rash that started on the victim’s face and spread to the body.
cases of monkeypox reported In the USA, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Spain and Portugal.
The virus, a type of smallpox, is most common in Africa, particularly in parts of the Congo and Nigeria. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, several thousand cases of human infections are reported each year, mostly from the bite and scratching of infected monkeys or from eating infected meat. The West African monkeypox strain is thought to be less dangerous than the one from the Congo Basin.
Suspicious cases in America discovered Wednesday and Thursday in Massachusetts and New York. The Massachusetts patient recently traveled to Canada, where more than a dozen cases were tracked in Montreal.
The virus is rare, relatively mild, and not very contagious to humans, making the spread of the current transcontinental epidemic a mystery. Human-to-human transmission is assumed to occur via droplets and bodily fluids, including secretions from ulcers caused by the virus. Monkeypox can also be transmitted through sexual intercourse between people.
“This is the most significant outbreak in the history of monkeypox in the Western Hemisphere,” said Anne Rimouin, UCLA professor of epidemiology. NBC News Thursday.
“What we’re facing today appears to be a subset of cases, with no history of travel and no contact, at least to one of the countries in Africa where the monkeypox virus naturally arose. No one was diagnosed with monkeypox. So what we see today is not common,” he said. Agam Rao of the Centers for Control and Prevention (CDC).
“We tell people this is a new problem. Some problems that arise become harmless. Others are increasing. “Due to an issue that has arisen, we are currently asking people to watch it,” he said.
This was said by former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Scott Gottlieb. CNBC On Friday, monkeypox is unlikely to become a “major epidemic” like the Chinese coronavirus because it’s a “difficult virus to spread”.
But Gottlieb added that monkeypox has a long incubation period that is difficult to diagnose, and so it could face “persistent low-level spreads” and “outbreaks” in countries outside of Africa.
Gottlieb noted that monkeypox is fatal in only one to four percent of cases, but can be a “disabled” disease whose effects last for two to four months.
Source: Breitbart
