Kerala is in a state of alert following the confirmation of a case of monkeypox in a 35-year-old who had travelled from the United Arab Emirates to the State.
A high-level multidisciplinary team despatched by the Centre to Kerala for supporting the State in adopting appropriate public health interventions and conducting outbreak investigation, is expected to arrive in the State on Friday.
The team will be working closely with State health authorities in instituting public health measures. They will take stock of the situation on ground and recommend the necessary interventions. The Union Health Ministry is also monitoring the situation in other States and is on the alert for any possible outbreaks.
The team members include P. Ravindran, Advisor to the Health Ministry, Sanket Kulkarni, Joint Director, National Centre for Disease Control, New Delhi; Arvind Kumar Achra, Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology and Akhilesh Thole, Dermatologist, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohya Hospital, New Delhi.
The patient is in isolation and treatment at the Government Medical College hospital, Thiruvananthapuram and two of his family members have also been isolated in the hospital. Two other people who drove him to the hospital as as well as 11 of his co-passengers on the flight from UAE have also been asked to go into isolation for 21 days.
They have been asked to self-monitor symptoms such as fever, head aches or rashes and if so, they will be moved into the hospital.
Monkeypox is not as easily transmissible as COVID but can spread through close contact. The disease is self-limiting. However, on rare occasions secondary bacterial infections can occur which might result in complications.
The course of the disease is slow and takes about between two and four weeks for the vesicular skin lesions to become dry scabs, which eventually fall off. The patient remains infectious throughout the course of the illness, till the lesions heal.
Though over 10,000 cases of the disease have been reported in 65 nations across Europe and the U.S, only three deaths due to monkeypox have been reported so far.
Health officials maintain that the universal precautions adopted by health workers and the general public during COVID is protective and adequate to prevent the transmission of monkeypox. However, as this is the season of viral fever and other infectious diseases like dengue in the State, any fever with rashes should be investigated and the person’s clinical history tracked.
Monkeypox virus belongs to the same virus family as that of small pox, a deadly disease which was declared eradicated by the WHO in 1980.
The disease has been confined largely to Central and West Africa. The only time it was reported outside of Africa was in 2003, when 47 confirmed and probable cases were reported in six States in the United States of America. The outbreak was linked to infected exotic pets imported from Ghana, which in turn infected some prairie dogs sold as pets, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Small pox vaccinations were wound up in the 1970s and the virus was declared eradicated in 1980. CDC scientists had suggested that the time that has lapsed after small pox eradication and the lack of inoculation might have weakened the immunity of subsequent generations to this virus.
The current outbreak of monkeypox has been termed unusual by scientists because Europe has emerged as the epicentre of the current outbreak and cases have spread across 65 nations through international travel. The US has around 1,000 cases, with New York State alone reporting 414 confirmed cases of which 389 are in New York City (as on July 14). The UK has over 1,550 confirmed cases, according to the UK Health Security Agency, with over 200 new cases.
It was reported that for many of these cases, health authorities had no idea how the person contracted the virus, which means that the disease could be in the community and people could be spreading it unknowingly.
The outbreak continues to grow despite the fact that it is not as easily transmissible as COVID. The UK Health Security Agency has issued warnings to people to test and be vigilant about monkeypox and “be aware that many of the cases had just a single lesion or may be a few lesions”.
