Monkeypox Cases Worldwide: The first monkeypox case has been confirmed in South Africa, health minister Joe Phaahla announced. At a press conference on Thursday, Phaahla stated that the patient was a 30-year-old male from Johannesburg who had no travel history, news agency Reuters reported.
Phaahla told the press that this confirmed case of monkeypox “cannot be attributed to having been acquired outside South Africa” hence a process of contact tracing was underway.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will decide on Thursday whether to declare monkeypox a global health emergency, prompting criticism from prominent African scientists who claim it has been a crisis in their region for years. The highest level of alert given by WHO is a “public health emergency of international concern” which it had declared with the spread of Covid-19.
In contrast to the coronavirus when it first emerged, monkeypox is not nearly as contagious as Covid, and vaccines and treatments are readily available. From the current outbreak outside of Africa, the case count has topped 3,000 in more than 40 countries, according to Reuters. It is endemic in parts of Africa, often in proximity to the tropical rainforests but not in South Africa.
Monkeypox is a viral disease that causes flu-like symptoms and skin lesions. While clinically less severe than smallpox, monkeypox is a viral zoonosis (a virus that spreads from animals to people) with symptoms that were once common among smallpox patients. Numerous rodent species and non-human primates serve as animal hosts. The central African (Congo Basin) clade and the West African clade are two distinct genetic clades of the monkeypox virus.
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