New Delhi:

The government on Monday recommended screening and testing of all suspected Mpox, or monkeypox patients, and isolation of confirmed cases, as well as contact tracing to “prevent and/or minimise risk of any case or death due to Mpox in the country”.

States and union territories have been urged to identify hospitals to prep isolation facilities and stand ready to receive suspected and confirmed cases, which will need increased resources.

It is “crucial”, the government also said to guard against “undue panic amongst the masses”.

To that end, the Health Ministry has recommended dissemination of guidelines on “management of monkeypox disease” and of a detailed surveillance strategy for tracking of suspected cases and contact tracing – similar to exhaustive measures at the height of the Covid pandemic.

It also offered a list of “laboratories operationalised to undertake testing, clinical management protocol, infection prevention and control practices, as well as risk communication strategies.

The ministry further called for a “review of public health preparedness, particularly at health facility level at state and districts by senior officials”.

This should include briefing healthcare workers, “especially those working in skin/STD (sexually transmitted disease) clinics, about symptoms, differential diagnoses, and action to be taken following detection of a Mpox case”.

To ensure information about Mpox and its common symptoms are widely available, the Health Ministry referred to the latest update by the World Health Organization, which indicated that a majority of monkeypox patients are men between the age of 18 and 44, and present with rash (systemic or genital) followed by fever as the most common symptoms.

Last month Mpox was declared a PHEIC, or Public Health Emergency of International Concern, by the WHO which had assessed the risk of spread of the current outbreak from beyond Africa, where a surge in cases has been reported from the Democratic Republic of Congo and also from other nations like Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. There is also a new strain from the DRC, scientists said.

READ | Pakistan’s Peshawar Is Mpox ‘Epicentre’? Tally Reaches 5: Report

No confirmed case has been reported from India so far, although five have been reported from Pakistan, according to Geo News. The latest patient, a 47-year-old man, tested positive after being isolated by Border Health Services staff on August 29. He had returned from the Gulf region.

READ | India’s 1st Mpox Case? Centre Says Man Isolated, No Cause For Alarm

In India, a man who recently returned from a country where confirmed cases have been reported was isolated on Sunday and his samples are being tested. His conditions is reported as stable.

According to the WHO, so far over 120 countries have reported Mpox cases from January 2022 to August 2024. There have been over 100,000 lab-confirmed cases and around 220 deaths.

READ | Serum Institute Says Working To Develop Monkeypox Vaccine

The WHO says a vaccine can help prevent infection and can also be administered after a person has been in contact with someone who has Mpox. “In these cases, the vaccine should be given less than four days after contact (and) can be given for up to 14 days if the person has no symptoms…”

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This file picture shows doses of Imvanex, a vaccine to protect against Monkeypox virus.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Thailand on Wednesday (August 21, 2024) reported a suspected first case of the new more dangerous strain of mpox, which the World Health Organization has declared a global public health emergency.

Also read:Risk of large outbreak of mpox low in India for now, says Health Ministry official

The patient is a European who travelled to Thailand from an African country, Thongchai Keeratihattayakorn, head of the kingdom’s Department of Disease Control told AFP.

Laboratory tests are under way to confirm the strain, but officials believe it to be from Clade 1. The infected person has been quarantined in hospital.

“We have done a test and they definitely have mpox and it’s definitely not Clade 2,” Mr. Thongchai said..

“We are convinced the person has the Clade 1 variant, but we have to wait to see the final result in the lab for two more days.”

Mpox cases and deaths are surging in Africa, where outbreaks have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since July.

The disease, caused by a virus transmitted by infected animals but passed from human to human through close physical contact, causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.

While mpox has been known for decades, a new more deadly and more transmissible strain — known as Clade 1b — has driven the recent surge in cases.

Clade 1b causes death in about 3.6 percent of cases, with children more at risk, according to the WHO.

Formerly called monkeypox, the virus was discovered in 1958 in Denmark, in monkeys kept for research.

DR Congo has reported more than 16,000 cases and 500 deaths this year.

On August 15 Sweden reported the first confirmed Clade 1 case outside Africa.