‘No need to panic’: Delhi CM Kejriwal says after Capital reports India's 4th monkeypox case
The patient, who is a 31-year-old resident of west Delhi, is currently admitted at the LNJP hospital. He has tested positive for the zoonotic disease despite having no recent foreign travel history.
After 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 micro-blogging site read.
Notably, the LNJP is the nodal hospital for monkeypox in the national capital.
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 admitted 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 today.
With the latest case from Delhi, India so far has reported four cases of monkeypox. The remaining three have been found in Kerala, with all being UAE returnees.
Over 17,000 cases of monkeypox virus have been reported in 75 countries so far. The World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday declared the zoonotic disease as a public health emergency. At a press briefing, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “too little” 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 little and which meets the criteria in the International Health Regulations,” he added.
The UN health agency said that monkeypox is transmitted 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.
