Delhi reports city’s first and India’s 4th monkeypox case
The 31-year-old resident of west Delhi tested positive for the zoonotic disease despite having no recent foreign tr avel histor y, senior health officials confir med
Ater Delhi reported its first and the country’s fourth monkeypox case on Sunday, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that “there is no need to panic.”
“The situation is under control,” he tweeted. “The first case of monkeypox was detected in Delhi. The patient is stable and recovering… We have made a separate isolation ward at LNJP (Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital). Our best team is on the case to prevent the spread and protect Delhiites,” his post on the microblogging site read.
The union ministry of health and family welfare on Sunday said a high-level review meeting on the monkeypox disease was being held by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) with the detection of the fourth case of the virus in the country.
The 31-year-old resident of west Delhi tested positive for the zoonotic disease despite having no recent foreign travel history, senior health officials confirmed.
They further revealed that the man began showing initial symptoms at least 10 days before. He had first developed fever and in the consequent days started showing skin lesions.
He was admited to the LNJP’S isolation ward on Friday, and his samples were confirmed being monkeypox positive from the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, earlier on Sunday.
With the latest case from Delhi, India so far has reported four cases of monkeypox.
The remaining three have been found in Kerala. Over 17,000 cases of monkeypox virus have been reported in 75 countries so far.
The World Health organisation (WHO) on Saturday declared the zoonotic disease as a public health emergency.
At a press briefing, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “too litle” is understood about the virus.
“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too litle and which meets the criteria in the International Health Regulations,” he added.
The UN health agency said that monkeypox is transmited to humans via close contact with another infected person or an animal in the form of “lesions, body fluids and respiratory droplets,” or with material - such as a bedding - contaminated with it.
“WHO’S assessment is that the risk of monkeypox is moderate globally and in all regions, except in the European region where we assess the risk as high,” WHO Director-general Tedros Adhanom Gherbreyesus said in a statement.
The statement also said further that it is also a clear risk of further international spread, although the risk of interference with international traffic remains low for the moment.
“So in short, we have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too litle, and which meets the criteria in the International Health Regulations,” the WHO chief added.
“For all of these reasons, I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern,” he added.
The WHO had previously declared emergencies for public health issues such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, the Zika virus in Latin America in 2016 and the ongoing effort to eradicate polio.
India on Sunday reported a marginal decline at 20,279 new Covid-19 cases in last 24 hours as compared to 21,411 reported on Saturday, said Union Health Ministry.
In the same period, the country has reported 36 more Covid-19 deaths, taking the nationwide toll to 5,25,033.
Meanwhile, the active caseload of the country has marginally increased to 1,52,200 cases, accounting for 0.35 per cent of the country’s total Covid-positive cases.
In a bid to generate more employment, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday announced that his government will develop food hubs in the national capital.
“Delhi is already known as the food capital of India but we have decided to take this concept further. We will develop all the food of the city,” the Chief Minister said in a media briefing.