Second Case of Monkeypox Identified in Israel
A second case of the monkeypox virus was confirmed in Israel in a man at Tel Aviv’s Sheba Medical Center on Friday. The 30-year-old man was hospitalized and then released after a while and details indicated that he had recently returned from a trip abroad. He had been diagnosed with the rare disease on Saturday. The second case of infection comes only a week after the country had seen its first case of the virus identified. That patient was also in his 30s and had returned to Israel from Western Europe. The Health Ministry had announced the previous Sunday that doctors had ruled out two more cases that were suspected of being the monkeypox virus.
The symptoms that help identify the virus include exhaustion, swollen lymph nodes, a fever, chills, muscle aches and a rash that appears on the face and hands, similar to chicken-pox. The first case of the monkeypox had been reported on May 7th by the United Kingdom. Since then, more than 200 cases have been reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) that had been diagnosed in different countries around the world. The disease is concerned endemic in central and West Africa. On Friday, Sylvie Brand spoke to the World Health Assembly.
She is the director of the department of Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases at the WHO. According to her, experts were not certain of whether the cases of the virus had reached their peak, or if there were a number of cases still left undetected. She warned that it was likely that more cases would be discovered, but also said that there was no need for people to panic. She went on to say that monkeypox was not a disease that people need to be worried about because it is not the same as COVID and does not spread as quickly.
A leading epidemiologist of the World Health Organization said on Thursday that it was likely that they would identify more cases of the monkeypox virus in countries where it does not usually happen. In a Q&A session, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhovesaid that they were expecting more cases and had asked countries to monitor the situation. She said that this condition could be contained, even if it was a tad difficult to do so. She said that the situation could be contained in countries that are non-endemic. The risks associated with the virus have also been played down by the health officials in Israel.
Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis had spoken last week in a phone briefing and had urged the people to stay calm. The public health services head stated that the virus was not a threat to the health of the general public, so there was no need to panic. The WHO has stated that it takes somewhere between two and four weeks for the virus to clear up. Israel had diagnosed a case of the monkeypox virus back in 2018 as well, but it had not led to any further infections in the community.
