New Delhi: A man from Himachal Pradesh’s Solan district is suspected to have Monkeypox with no foreign travel history, health officials said on Friday. The samples of the man has been sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune the health department said in a press release, as reported by news agency PTI. A resident of the Baddi area, the man showed symptoms of the infection 21 days ago and is currently recovering.
He has been kept under isolation as a precautionary measure and surveillance is being conducted in the nearby areas to detect any new case, the press release added.
Four confirmed cases of monkeypox disease — three from Kerala and one from Delhi — have been reported in the country as of July 27, the central government informed the Lok Sabha on Friday.
Monkeypox is a rare zoonotic disease (infectious disease that is transmitted between species from animals to humans or from humans to animals), which is transmitted from one person to another through close contact with infected people, their body fluids, clothing or bedsheets.
Most patients only experience fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. People with more severe illnesses may develop a rash and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body.
Last week, after over 16,000 cases were reported from 75 different countries, the World Health Organization declared that the risk of monkeypox is “moderate globally and in all regions” and that the risk factor in the European region has been assessed to be high.
It is the seventh time that the health organisation has made such a declaration since 2009, the most recent being Covid-19.