Last Updated on July 24, 2022 at 3:24 pm
Delhi announced its first case of monkeypox today after a 31-year-old man with no prior history of international travel was found to be diagnosed with the virus. The previous three instances of monkeypox in India have been recorded in Kerala, making this the fourth case.
An official stated that the man had attended a party in Manali, Himachal Pradesh. The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) had scheduled a high-level review meeting on monkeypox for today at 3 p.m.
According to the report, the West Delhi resident was admitted to the hospital three days ago with sickness symptoms, and yesterday his samples were transferred to the National Institute of Virology.
Although less severe than smallpox, the monkeypox virus is a zoonotic disease that has similar symptoms. Direct or indirect contact between an infected animal and a human is the way virus spreads. The skin or lesions of an infected person, as well as respiratory droplets, if directly touched, can contract the disease from one person to another.
More than 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported thus far from 75 different nations. Africa has also reportedly witnessed five fatalities. The global monkeypox epidemic has been classified by the World Health Organization as a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC), a level below “pandemic.”
The WHO defines a PHEIC as an extraordinary event that poses a public health risk to other nations due to its potential for international transmission and that may call for a coordinated worldwide response.
Most instances of monkeypox that have been recorded recently have been in males, and they typically affect gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) living in urban areas and are concentrated in social and sexual networks. According to the WHO, several of the early reports of affected children have no known epidemiological connection to other cases.
