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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Manila:

The Philippines has confirmed two more mpox virus infections of the milder clade 2 variety, its health ministry said Monday, bringing the number of active cases to three.

“We continue to see local transmission of mpox clade II here in the Philippines, in Metro Manila in particular,” Health Minister Teodoro Herbosa said in a statement.

The newly confirmed cases were a 37-year-old male in Metro Manila who had rash on his body last week and was brought to a government hospital, and a 32-year-old male from the capital who had skin lesions on his body.

The Philippines announced last week it had detected a case of the mpox virus’ milder variant in a 33-year-old male who had no travel history outside the Philippines.

The three cases this year means the Philippines has had 12 laboratory-confirmed case since July 2022.

The World Health Organization earlier this month declared mpox a global public health emergency, its highest form of alert, for the second time in two years, because of an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo that had spread to neighbouring countries.

A new form of the virus has triggered global concern as it seems to spread easily though routine close contact.

The disease, caused by the monkeypox virus, leads to flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. It is usually mild but can kill, with children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems, such as those with HIV, all at higher risk of complications.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Kinshasa, DR Congo:

Mpox cases and deaths are rising in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as the central African country awaits vaccines from the United States and Japan, the health minister said on Monday.

The count this year has risen in a few days from 16,000 cases and 548 deaths to 16,700 cases and “a little more than 570” deaths, Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said.

“We are talking about a continental emergency,” Kamba told a press briefing as the World Health Organisation (WHO) called on affected countries to step up vaccination programmes to counter a more deadly strain of mpox.

The WHO on Wednesday declared the mpox surge in Africa a global public health emergency. Outbreaks have been reported in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda since July. A case of the new strain has also been detected in Sweden.

The United States has promised 50,000 vaccine doses for DRC, while Japan on Monday agreed Monday to send 3.5 million doses, “only for children,” a medical source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The source said that DRC “plans to vaccinate four million people including 3.5 million children”.

“I hope by the next week we will already be able to see the vaccines arriving,” Kamba said.

“The vaccine is a solution to our problems,” he added, urging people to get jabbed.

“Our strategic vaccination plan is ready. We are just waiting for the vaccines to arrive.”

WHO calls for vaccines 

Cases have now surfaced in all 26 provinces in the country of around 100 million people.

The WHO has declared the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern” — its highest alert category.

On Monday it released updated guidelines on countering the surge, including by “the agile adaptation of immunization strategies and plans to concerned areas”.

It called on countries to “scale up efforts to thoroughly investigate cases and outbreaks of mpox disease” to understand its transmission and prevent the spread “to household members and communities”.

Health authorities must report new cases on a weekly basis and “identify, monitor and support the contacts of people with mpox to prevent onward transmission,” it said.

It added that countries had to be ready to provide food and other support for mpox patients “including, as warranted and possible, isolation in care centres and guidance for home-based care”.

The WHO said there has to be greater “cross-border collaboration” to monitor and handle suspected mpox cases “without resorting to general travel and trade restrictions unnecessarily impacting local, regional or national economies”.

While mpox has been known for decades, a new more deadly and more transmissible strain — clade 1b — causes death in about 3.6 per cent of cases, with children more at risk, according to the WHO.

Kamba said that mpox is reaching “more and more young people” in DRC and there are a lot of children under 15 who have been affected.

A total of 18,737 suspected or confirmed cases of mpox were reported in Africa since the beginning of the year, including 1,200 cases in one week, the African Union health agency said Saturday.

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

It was first discovered in humans in 1970 in what is now the DRC.

Mpox is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.

The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)