Officials in Mexico confirm the country’s first case of monkeypox.
Mexico City:
Health officials in Mexico on Saturday confirmed the first known case of monkeypox in the country, in a 50-year-old U.S. resident being treated in Mexico City.
The man, a permanent resident of New York City, “probably was infected in the Netherlands,” Hugo Lopez-Gatell, a health officer, said on Twitter.
“Fortunately, he is stable and in precautionary isolation,” said Lopez-Gatell. “We hope he recovers without complications.”
He does not provide information about the patient’s possible connections to others.
On Friday, health authorities in Argentina confirmed the first two known cases of the disease anywhere in Latin America – that of a 40-year-old man who had returned to Argentina from Spain. Nha and of a Spaniard visiting Buenos Aires.
The two cases do not appear to be related.
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 severe. Initial symptoms include high fever, swollen lymph nodes, and a chickenpox-like rash.
There is no specific treatment, but smallpox vaccination has been shown to be about 85% effective in preventing smallpox in monkeys.
Monkeypox was first detected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970 and is considered endemic in about a dozen African countries.
Its emergence in non-endemic countries has worried experts, although the cases reported to date 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 an aggregated feed.)
