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No secondary cases linked to SA's three monkeypox cases, says NICD

Ernest Mabuza Journalist
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases says healthcare workers should be on high alert for monkeypox.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases says healthcare workers should be on high alert for monkeypox.
Image: 123RF/katmoy

There have been no secondary cases of monkeypox linked to SA's three confirmed cases, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said on Wednesday.

From June 22 to July 19 there were no deaths reported after the three unlinked laboratory-confirmed cases, it said.

“The cases were reported from Gauteng, Western Cape and Limpopo provinces, and are males aged 30, 32 and 42 years respectively.”

The NICD said no recent international travel was reported in the Gauteng and Western Cape cases.

It said in the Gauteng case, the person had close contact with an undiagnosed person with international travel history, while the Western Cape case reported possibly having unspecified contact with people who had international travel history due to his work.

The NICD said the third case, reported on July 10 in Limpopo, is an imported case involving a tourist who has since returned to his home country, Switzerland.

It said public health response measures were initiated, with 28 close contacts identified.  Five were in Gauteng, six in the Western Cape and 17 in Limpopo.

“The close contacts identified in Gauteng and Western Cape have since completed their 21 days of symptoms monitoring, while the contacts identified in Limpopo from the two lodges where the case stayed are still being monitored.

The NICD said even though the risk of monkeypox to the public is considered low, healthcare workers should be on high alert.

It said they should maintain a high index of suspicion for any individuals presenting with an unexplained acute rash or skin lesions, and one or more of these symptoms: headache, acute onset of fever, swollen lymph nodes, myalgia (muscle pain/body aches) and backache.

The NICD said from May to July 19 13,436 laboratory-confirmed cases have been reported from 70 non-endemic countries across five World Health Organisation (WHO) regions (the European region, region of the Americas, eastern Mediterranean region, western Pacific region and the African region). 

“The majority of cases have been reported from the WHO European region, with 7,896 confirmed cases reported from 27 countries as of 18 July 2022.”

TimesLIVE


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