Thailand's fourth case of monkeypox has been confirmed in Bangkok on Friday. The patient is a woman with a record of visiting entertainment venues popular with foreign tourists.
Department of Disease Control director-general Opas Karnkawinpong said on Friday that the latest case is a 22-year-old woman who regularly visited areas at risk of monkeypox transmission.
He said the woman developed a fever on July 29 but still visited entertainment places in Bangkok with her Thai and foreign friends. On July 30, she started to have blisters on her arms and legs before they spread to her sexual organ and other body parts.
On Wednesday, the woman sought treatment at a hospital in Samut Prakan. Results of laboratory tests conducted by the Medical Sciences Department and Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Medicine indicated that she had been infected with monkeypox on Thursday.
She was later transferred to Bamrasnaradura Infectious Disease Institute in Nonthaburi, said Dr Opas.
The patient was the country’s fourth monkeypox case and the country’s first woman who caught the disease. The first case was a Nigerian man, the second a Thai man in Bangkok and the third a German man in Phuket.
Dr Opas said he had instructed the 6th Disease Control Office in Chon Buri to work closely with the Institute for Urban Disease Control and Prevention and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s Health Department to trace down those who were in close contact with the woman, including two of her roommates.
The health official stressed that the monkeypox disease does not spread easily between people.
