The capital recorded its second case of monkeypox on Monday after a 35-year-old man admitted at the city’s Lok Nayak hospital tested positive for the infection, the Union health ministry confirmed, adding that the patient had not travelled outside Delhi recently.
“A Nigerian national has tested positive for monkeypox in Delhi,” a Union health ministry spokesperson said.
Two of his contacts are isolated in the facility and being treated as suspected monkeypox patients. Their reports are awaited, doctors said.
Officials from Lok Nayak hospital, the nodal facility for monkeypox in the Capital, said that the man, a Nigerian national who lives in Delhi, was admitted to the hospital on Saturday with symptoms, including fever and rashes, that pointed towards monkeypox.
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Six cases of the infection have been confirmed across India so far, Union health ministry officials said on Monday — four from Kerala and two from Delhi.
The man’s samples were sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune and the reports returned positive results on Monday.
{{/usCountry}}The man’s samples were sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune and the reports returned positive results on Monday.
{{/usCountry}}“None of the three patients [the confirmed patient and the other two suspected ones] isolated at the hospital have any recent travel history. Authorities have been informed and they have started the contact tracing process,” said a doctor from the hospital.
Delhi’s first monkeypox patient tested positive on July 24. A 34-year-old resident of west Delhi, too had no history of foreign travel, but travelled to Himachal Pradesh, after which he started developing fever and skin eruptions.
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He was admitted to Lok Nayak Hospital on July 22 and his samples returned positive two days later from NIV Pune.
“The [west Delhi] patient is stable and recovering well. Our team will decide when he will be fit to be discharged depending on his health status,” Dr Suresh Kumar, medical director, Lok Nayak Hospital, said on Monday.
The second patient’s health status was not immediately clear.
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With the confirmation of the new case in Delhi, India’s total tally of monkeypox cases has reached six. Four infections have been reported from Kerala and two have been reported from Delhi. Kerala on Monday also reported India’s first monkeypox death—a 22-year-old man who had recently returned from UAE.
Monkeypox is a viral zoonosis (a virus transmitted to humans from animals) with symptoms similar to those seen in the past in smallpox patients.
However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is clinically less severe than smallpox. The infection, unlike Covid-19 is not airborne and is known to spread through close contact with bodily fluids or through contact with the clothes or bed linen of an infected person.