New Delhi: A suspected monkeypox case has come to the fore in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida, health department officials told PTI on Wednesday (July 27). A 47-year-old woman approached the health department on Tuesday after which her samples were taken, officials informed. “The samples have been sent for a test to Lucknow, and the patient is in home isolation at the moment. Monkeypox can be confirmed only after the test results are out,” an official told the news agency. The travel history of the patient was yet to be confirmed.
On Tuesday, a suspected monkeypox patient was admitted to the LNJP Hospital in Delhi. The man, a resident of Ghaziabad, had fever and lesions for the last week while his reports from the National Institute of Virology, Pune are awaited. As per PTI sources, he had travelled abroad about a month ago.
India currently has four confirmed cases of monkeypox, three in Kerala and one in Delhi. As per the Centre’s patient isolation guidelines, those infected with the zoonotic virus must stay in a separate room with “separate ventilation”. The patients have to wear a triple-ply mask while the skin lesions should be covered to the best extent possible to curb the risk of contact with others. The infected will remain in isolation until all lesions have healed and the scabs completely fall.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency after over 16,000 cases were reported from 75 countries and five people have died since the outbreak this year. “We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria in the International Health Regulations. For all of these reasons, I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said.
(With agency inputs)