Officials in Mexico confirmed the first case of monkeypox in the country.
Mexico City:
Health officials in Mexico on Saturday confirmed the country’s first known case of monkeypox, with a 50-year-old American resident undergoing treatment in Mexico City.
A permanent resident of New York City, “probably in the Netherlands was infected,” Hugo López-Gatell, an undersecretary of health, said on Twitter.
“Fortunately, he is stable and in preventive isolation,” López-Gatell said. “We hope he recovers without complications.”
He did not provide any information about possible contacts of the patient with other people.
On Friday, health officials in Argentina confirmed the first two known cases of the disease anywhere in Latin America – a 40-year-old man who had returned to Argentina from Spain, and a Spaniard who was visiting Buenos Aires.
Apparently the two cases were not linked.
Monkeypox virus can be transmitted to humans by infected animals. Person-to-person transmission is possible but rare.
Monkeypox is related to smallpox but is much less serious. Early symptoms include high fever, swollen lymph nodes, and a chickenpox-like rash.
There is no specific treatment but vaccination against smallpox has been found to be about 85 percent effective in preventing monkeypox.
Monkeypox was first detected in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1970 and is thought to be endemic in about a dozen African countries.
Its presence in non-endemic countries has alarmed experts, although the cases reported so far have been mostly mild and there have been no deaths.
There have been at least half a dozen confirmed or suspected cases in the US.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)