Mexico has confirmed its first case of monkeypox

Mexican health officials have confirmed the first known case of monkeypox in the country.

Health officials in Mexico on Saturday confirmed the country’s first known case of monkeypox in a 50-year-old U.S. resident treated in Mexico City.

The man, a permanent resident of New York, “was probably infected in the Netherlands,” Hugo Lopez-Gatel, deputy health minister, said on Twitter.

“Fortunately, he is stable and in preventive isolation,” Lopez-Gatel said. We hope that he will recover without complications.

He did not provide information about the patient’s possible contacts with other people.

On Friday, health authorities in Argentina confirmed the first two known cases of the disease throughout Latin America – those of a 40-year-old man who returned to Argentina from Spain and a Spaniard visiting Buenos Aires.

The two cases were clearly unrelated.

The monkeypox virus can be transmitted to humans from infected animals. Human-to-human transmission is possible, but rare.

Monkeypox is associated with smallpox, but is much less severe. Initial symptoms include fever, swollen lymph nodes, and chickenpox-like rash.

There is no specific treatment, but smallpox vaccination has been found to be about 85 percent effective in preventing monkeypox.

File with facts about the current outbreak of monkeypox, as dozens of cases of the rare disease have been found in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Monkeypox was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970 and is considered endemic in about a dozen African countries.

Its occurrence in non-endemic countries has worried experts, although the cases reported so far are mostly mild and there are no deaths.

There are at least half a dozen confirmed or suspected cases in the United States.

Argentina reports a case of monkeypox; a man was traveling from Spain

© 2022 AFP

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