Mexican health officials have confirmed the first known case of monkeypox in the country.
Mexican health officials confirmed the first known case of monkeypox in the country on Saturday in a 50-year-old U.S. resident who was being treated in Mexico City.
The man, a permanent resident of New York City, “was probably infected in the Netherlands,” Hugo Lopez-Gatell, undersecretary of health, said on Twitter.
“Fortunately, it is stable and in preventive isolation,” Lopez-Gatell said. “We hope he recovers without complications.”
He did not provide any information about the patient’s possible contact with other people.
On Friday, the Argentine health authorities confirmed the first two known cases of the disease in all of Latin America: those of a 40-year-old man who had returned to Argentina from Spain and those of a Spaniard who was visiting Buenos Aires.
Apparently, the two cases were unrelated.
The monkeypox virus can be transmitted to humans by infected animals. Person-to-person transmission is possible but rare.
Smallpox is related to smallpox, but is much less severe. Initial symptoms include high fever, swollen lymph nodes, and a rash like chickenpox.
There is no specific treatment, but smallpox vaccination has been found to be approximately 85% effective in preventing smallpox.
Fact sheet on the current smallpox outbreak of the monkey, as dozens of cases of the rare disease are detected in North America, Europe and the Middle East.
Smallpox was first detected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970 and is considered endemic in a dozen African countries.
Its appearance in non-endemic countries has worried 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 suspicious cases in the US.
Argentina reports a case of smallpox; man was traveling from Spain
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Citation: Mexico confirms its first case of smallpox (2022, May 29) recovered on May 29, 2022
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